Obviously
by ThePraetorLady
Summary: College AU. Best friends Reyna and Jason rule student government, while best friends Leo and Piper wreck havoc as the campus troublemakers. But when Jason and Piper get together, the four of them begin to spend a lot of "quality time" together. Jasper and Leyna, with side Percabeth and Frazel. MULTICHAP.
1. Irregularity

_A/N: So yeah! This is going to be a big one. Sucky first installment, sorry._

_Disclaimer: You know this is Rick Riordan's._

* * *

University life was straightforward, reliable, regular. Monotonous, some might even say. But Reyna Ramírez-Arellano—only Reyna to the rest of campus, because who really wanted two last names?—had it under control, and that was far more important than having excitement.

She waited by the door for Annabeth Chase to finish debating her quiz grade with Professor Lupa. Eventually the blonde trailed over, lips pursed and ponytail bouncing against her backpack. The two girls nodded in sync at the prof and then let themselves out of the classroom so the next class's students could stream in.

"I just don't see why a question that was only a sidebar in the reading should be worth ten points," Annabeth complained. "If I get a B in this class, my GPA will tank. My mother will kill me. _I_ will kill me."

Reyna's lips barely quirked upward. Grade anxiety—something else regular. But they were only in the second week into fall semester, not nearly late enough to ruin their academic careers. "Right. You know, it's really next year that'll tank your GPA."

"Don't remind me. But there will at least be a lot of actual design involved." Annabeth brightened a little at this thought. She was a transfer student majoring in architectural design, but she was a junior like Reyna, and the challenge of upper-level classes really only fueled her pride.

A lean guy with messy black hair and a mischievous grin rode by on his skateboard, planting a kiss on Annabeth's cheek as he passed. "Percy!" she complained, but he only grinned and kept going.

Percy Jackson was a transfer as well, Reyna knew. She'd contemplated him briefly when she first met him, but he and Annabeth had been together for years, and he'd had zero interest. Probably for the best—his skateboarder attitude was a little more rebellious than she could trust.

"And that damn assignment's going to kill me," Annabeth continued. "Two chapters to read _and_ an essay to draft? I don't even want to know what Mr. D will be assigning in World Mythology." She straightened her pencil skirt and, when they came to the end of the hall, pushed the door open with her outstretched arm.

The crisp fall air stung a little at Reyna's face and bare arms. _I knew I should have worn a jacket,_ she scolded herself. "At least World Mythology will be interesting," Reyna said, pointedly staring at a freshman named Dakota who was giving them both the once-over.

He turned red and turned away to gulp something that didn't look like Kool-Aid.

She returned her attention to their path to the student center. "We're where, now? The chapter on Ancient Greece?"

The blonde nodded. "Are you coming to lunch?"

They pushed through the double-doors to the lower level of the student center. "Can't; I have to work," Reyna said. She liked Annabeth, but she loved her student government job. It was something else she knew and could control. "How about lunch tomorrow?"

"Sounds great! See you at two, then." Annabeth smiled and waved before heading upstairs to the cafeteria, and Reyna walked around the staircase to the hallway just past the post office. Students milled around in throngs, torn between the need for coffee and mail and the need to get to class on time, but when she came near the masses parted for her to pass. She glided by with her chin high; heads turned and even conversations quieted to watch her go.

Hitching her book bag strap over her shoulder, she turned a corner and clenched her jaw: the Latino boy from Spanish club and World Mythology (how had he managed to worm his way into her schedule _twice_?) was waiting outside the student government offices again, wearing a stained T-shirt and a grin that seemed to split his face in half. His presence was one regularity she would have liked to dispose of.

"Are you from Tennessee?" he called to her as she came near. "'Cause you're the only _ten I s_—"

"Move," Reyna ordered, brushing past him to get into the office and then shutting the door firmly behind her. He peered in through the front wall, which was mostly glass, but she ignored him as she dropped her bag on the floor, folded herself into her favorite rolling chair, reached into her desk, and pulled out a few files she needed to sign. She tilted her desk label toward him—_PRESIDENT_, the wooden plaque said, in all caps—in case he thought he was messing with some underling.

A low laugh came from the next desk over, and she looked up to see her vice president, Jason Grace, smile and wave at the other guy.

"You know him?" she asked shortly, flicking her long braid over her shoulder as she stared, hard and unfriendly, out the window.

A tan girl with choppy hair came by and dragged the boy away, and once they'd disappeared Jason turned to look at Reyna. She looked him right in the eye, mostly so that she wouldn't linger on things like his broad shoulders or the scar on his lip. You would think that after ten years of being best friends, she would have calmed down about such things, but unfortunately you would be mistaken. As it was, she operated around the problem like she did most others involving feelings: she ignored it and hoped it would eventually go away.

"Yeah, he's a good guy," Jason said, but Jason said this about almost anyone at Apollo University, so Reyna's eyebrows jumped but she didn't bother to argue. "He's from Central."

That explained why she didn't know his name. Central University had burned down over the summer, so many of its commuter students—including Annabeth and Percy—had transferred to Apollo simply because it was only ten minutes away. _Some_ of those students, Reyna was certain, would have done better to find somewhere else to get an education.

"His name's Leo," Jason continued, "I think he's a chemistry, no, engineering major. He's pretty funny, once you get past the bad puns."

"Uh-_huh_." Pulling a granola bar out of her book bag, she went back to flipping through the papers to find the blank lines she needed to sign, and they fell into companionable silence.

They worked through the lunch hour and then some, and at ten til two, Reyna began to pack everything back up into her desk.

"You ready to go?" she asked, and when Jason gave a bright _yep_ she stood, slung her bag over her shoulder, and stared at him as he leisurely did the same. The muscles in his arms and shoulders pulled at his Superman T-shirt—not that she cared. They were just friends. Best friends. And platonic roommates. If they were to become anything more, they would have already. Right?

She blinked back into the present and found him staring back at her, a quizzical smile on his lips. "You ready to go?" he asked.

"Yeah," she sighed.

He held the door open and let her walk through before he followed, and they walked side-by-side into the scattered crowd.

Unlike her trip toward their office, however, the reaction was split. Those closer to her drew back and averted their eyes, like before, but those closer to Jason brightened and reached out for him, as though they could gain some of his virtue by touching the hem of his sleeve.

"Hey, Jason!"

"How's it going, Jason?"

"You look really nice, today, Jason!"

And if that wasn't unreasonable enough, he smiled and touched right back. "Hey, Michael. Good, Gwen, you? Thanks, Drew, you too!" Reyna would have been surprised that he knew all their names if that weren't ridiculously regular. As far as she knew, not a single person at Apollo University (or possibly anywhere else, for that matter) disliked him.

The masses dispersed as Reyna and Jason swept outdoors, where the wind had picked up and Reyna realized she should have had more than a granola bar for lunch. Now slightly grumpy, she looked down to root around her book bag for a second one, or a bag of jelly beans, or _something_ to eat before World Mythology. Mr. D did bring great snacks when he could be bothered to show up to class, but he was about as reliable as the weather, and she would depend on him as soon as she stopped carrying an umbrella around on sunny days.

"Here you go." Someone matched their pace on her other side, a hand holding out a sandwich wrapped in plastic wrap. Reyna looked up into the slightly smug smile of Annabeth.

"Thanks." She took the sandwich, peeled the plastic wrap off the top, and bit down: creamy peanut butter and strawberry jam. Good, though it could be improved by more of both toppings, and possibly a sprinkling of jelly beans. But it was an understandable omission, since only Jason knew about her attachment to putting jelly beans on regular food, so she simply appreciated the gesture.

Percy wheeled up on Jason's other side and then kicked his skateboard up into his hands, slipping into a walk as easy as breathing. "Sup, man," he grinned, clapping the blond on the back as he too fell into step. The four of them in a row now took up most of the sidewalk, but no one tried to split off into pairs. It was the four of them, always the four of them, for this one class at least. The rest of the time, it was mostly just her and Jason. But she was okay with that.

"How's your Ancient Greek?" Jason asked Percy, who gave him a thumbs-up.

"Awesome, given that everything in this school is Greek," he joked. "_Apollo_ University, with sports teams named the _Demigods_—"

"Apollo was Roman," Reyna said, leaning forward to look around Jason at Percy.

"Um, he was Greek first."

"He was Roman in the end, given that Rome conquered Greece. Decisively."

"_Guys_," Jason sighed as they swung automatically into a single-file line to get into the philosophy building. First room on the right—World Mythology. Mr. D was late as usual, so the students had parked on top of the tables for a few blessed minutes of non-academics.

Besides the subject matter, Reyna liked this class for its diversity of student levels. It was a general education course, so there were a few freshmen enrolled—Hazel Levesque, for one, and Callie Islet, a perpetually single flirt—but really any students who wanted their humanities requirement satisfied with minimal effort. Exhibit A: crouched behind the tech cart was Leo Valdez, grinning (did he exist in any other state?) and looking distinctly devious. She squinted in his direction from her place at Jason's side, unsure if it was worth talking to Valdez in order to put an end to his shenanigans.

Callie then sidled up to their group, and as no one was rude enough to shoo her off, she stared wonderingly up at Percy. "Hi, Percy," she said in a breathless tone. "How are you?"

He looked at her a little strangely. She was pretty, with caramel-colored hair and a free-flowing white dress that seemed impractical to Reyna, but he wasn't all that interested. "Um, good, you?"

"I'm good," she smiled. "Want to come sit by me?" She gestured to her seat by the window.

Annabeth was watching this exchange with a carefully blank expression, but Reyna could practically hear the amusement and jealousy warring inside her. _MRS degree,_ the blonde mouthed over Callie's head, and Reyna pressed her lips together against a smile. The freshman had homeschooled through elementary and high school, and the solitude had made her a little too eager to snag a guy.

"Um, sorry, I'm kind of committed to sitting by Annabeth," Percy said, tugging on his girlfriend's shirt. She laughed a little and leaned into him.

Callie cast a brief, dark look at the blonde, but following her regular pattern, she promptly moved her gaze to Jason. "What about you?" she asked hopefully.

But for once, Jason was not paying attention. And then, throwing regularity to the wind: "Piper's not here," he mumbled, craning his neck to see the students across the room.

Reyna almost jumped. "Who?" He had never outright ignored Callie before, and he had _certainly_ never mentioned a girl. They were best friends, roommates, fellow student leaders, attached at the hip, and he hadn't bothered to mention he was _interested_ in someone?

—but Mr. D walked in then, sporting a plastic bag of groceries and what looked like a hangover. Leo jumped up from behind the tech cart and threw himself into his third-row seat, widening his eyes and cupping his chin in his hands in his best Innocent impression.

Reyna pursed her lips and slid into her front-row seat between Jason and Annabeth. Callie left them and dropped into the empty seat to Leo's left, smiling brightly and touching him on the arm as she chatted him up. He said something about her being "as pretty and fun as Caribbean music," a pun on her full first name, Calypso, and she blushed coyly.

Ugh. Idiots. Reyna took out her notebook and tried to block out the giggling. But her question hadn't been answered: who the hell was Piper?

* * *

That night, Piper McLean leaned over the counter of Nectar and Ambrosia, the student-run coffee shop, and tugged her sleeves down over her hands so that she could only see the ends of her fingers. The front of her apron stuck to the imitation-wood thanks to multiple spills and rascally syrups, so she didn't care about the little bit more the counter added. The fridge whirred softly, but there was no one in line—no one even in the area as a whole—so she and Leo could be, and were, plenty loud.

"And then right when he was going to start talking about Olympus, the speaker system went _waaaaah_ and said 'the cow says moo!' He spent fifteen minutes staring at the tech cart!" Leo exploded in laughter, his curls vibrating as his whole body shook. Piper curled over the counter with her head down, and her uncontrollable laughter turned into a snort.

When she had air in her lungs again, she chortled, "You should have had it play 'What does the fox say'—then they would have had it in their heads all day!"

A string of Spanish words flew out of his mouth. "You're right," he huffed. "_Mierda_. An opportunity wasted."

"Next time, bro." She patted him on the arm. "Want to hear about the fire alarm I set off in the dorm?"

He brightened: "Every single detail!" he pleaded, twisting his hands together and squishing his shoulders up by his ears—a lovesick 12-year-old girl waiting to hear about a friend's crush. "Oh hem _gee!_"

She snorted again, shifting her weight to her other hip to get comfortable, but before she could say anything, someone coughed softly from the direction of the stairs. She glanced over, her little braids smacking her cheeks and neck with all the ferocity of bunnies, and she saw the hot blond VP standing alone in line, trying for a casual slump and not quite managing it.

Fresh meat. She smacked the counter between her and Leo, gave her best friend a meaningful look, and said, "One sec" before, louder, "Hey, sorry, I can get you now."

Vice President Tall, Buff, and Handsome stepped up to the counter. Piper knew his name full well, but it was more fun to pretend she didn't: "Grace, right?" she asked, cocking her hip out and suppressing a grin as she watched him almost drop his wallet.

Funny—as a rule, she never put too much effort into her appearance. Today, for example, was just a couple of layers of T-shirts and a pair of ripped jeans. There were more important things to spend her time on, like figuring out how to pickpocket the fanciest pants on campus. But Jason was looking at her like he'd never seen a girl before.

"Yeah," he said, his face reddening a bit. It was kind of cute, to be honest; almost enough to crack her flirty front and turn her into a stammering idiot too. But she just focused on his open wallet, and she was good. "Jason—Jason Grace."

He paused, waiting like he wanted her to say something in return, but she pulled out a cardboard cup instead. "What can I get you?" she prompted him.

"Uh—" He blinked, like he'd forgotten he came here for coffee. "Right, sorry. I need a mocha, extra chocolate, extra whipped cream, and then a triple shot of espresso."

Two orders. She pulled out a second cup and scrawled an order on each one. "These both for you?" she asked.

"No, one's for Reyna."

Her lips parted in a knowing _ah_. "Must be a long night ahead for the two of you," she teased.

"It will be," he agreed before her double-entendre tone caught up with him. He reddened even more as he stammered, "Not that we're—I mean, tests. We have research papers and a couple of tests to study for—I mean, we do live together, but it's not—We aren't—" He trailed off in embarrassment.

"Hey, it's none of my business what student gov does on their nights off," Piper smirked, holding up her hands.

Leo snickered, and Jason looked over, bewildered.

Piper swallowed a laugh, shook her head. "So which one's Reyna's?"

It took him a second to recover his voice. "The extra-chocolate one."

That surprised her, given the lady president's normal image of Regal and Grown-Up, but she was the first to admit appearances weren't everything. For example, most people didn't peg her as a smooth-talker and a thief, which was why she was so good at it. So she said nothing as she wrote the right name on each cup.

"It'll just be a second," she said with a waving-off gesture to give him leave to talk to Leo or something while she threw the coffees together, but he lingered by the cash register.

"How long have you been working here?" he asked over the whir of the espresso machine. "I mean, I stop here pretty much every day, but I've only ever seen Drew or Malcolm working the late shift."

She glanced his way and found him looking at her intently. "Yeah, I'm new," she allowed. "Put the newbie on the worst time slot, right? But a job's a job. Gotta make money somehow."

Leo cackled. She glared. _Not the time,_ she projected at him. She had zero desire for a lecture on the morality of theft, and if Leo thought her skills were funny, she'd take back the Camaro she'd picked up for him last year.

Piper slapped lids on both coffee cups and slid the drinks toward Jason. He gave her exact change, and she gave him his receipt. "Have a good night," she smiled, but as he began to say _thanks_ she winked at him, the most flirty and suggestive wink she could manage, so it came out more like _thaang_.

Jason Grace took his coffee and fled up the stairs.

Leo was practically rolling on the floor, he was laughing so hard. "You did the Thing," he gasped.

She ran her fingers through her choppy hair and made a face. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she said loftily, but she could feel her face smoldering into what she knew was a bright red. Then, her concentration on obnoxious flirting broken: "He's _cute!_" she protested in an embarrassed hiss, making Leo laugh even harder.

"_I'm_ cute. _He's_, like, a blond Superman." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"Shut up." Against her will, her eyes glanced up the staircase, looking for blond hair and broad shoulders and not finding them. Why would she? He had homework and tests and coffee and Reyna. But she unconsciously began to smooth her right hand over her throat, stroking from under her jaw down to her clavicle. A nervous habit, a comforting gesture left over from the way she used to pet Nunnehi, the last cat her dad gave her. Why did she need comforting? That was stupid.

Her best friend grabbed a fistful of her hair and tugged on it lightly. "Dude, Piper. Earth to Piper. Did you at least pull anything?"

She started, then shook her head. "Nah, didn't get the chance." He gave her a look. She had had plenty of chances—Grace had practically thrown his wallet at her. Twice. But she didn't want to discuss why exactly she had left the VP un-pickpocketed, so she crossed her arms over her sticky-aproned chest, and Leo took the hint.

"Fine. Then tell me about the fire alarm," he said.

So she did, even though she was still blushing, not to mention irritated at her stupid, slight disappointment at the empty staircase. But as she talked, it occurred to her that if Jason made a nightly caffeine stop here, she might volunteer for the late shift more often.


	2. Useless

_A/N: You guys are so nice! I love you all. Also I just realized that Apollo University would be shorthanded to "AU" and I'm ridiculously amused by this._

_Not sure how I feel about this update (I've also been awake for 20 hours straight so there's that), but it's an update, and next chapter is half written already._

* * *

"Where is he?" Reyna asked Aurum, her golden greyhound as she tapped her pen at lightning speed against her open textbook. Aurum's only response was to try to bite through the neck of his silvery brother, Argentum. The dogs began to tussle, tails wagging, and she only sighed and stared at the door. It was long past time for their nightly Homework With Coffee. Where was Jason?

But the door swung open then, and Jason shouldered his way into their apartment, shivering in his thin T-shirt but holding two cups of coffee. "Sorry it took so long," he said, but he sounded dazed and—Reyna thought—not all that sorry.

He held out her cup, and she took it. "What was the holdup?" she asked, inspecting the words written by the lid. Maybe if someone new was working . . . Yeah, she didn't recognize the handwriting that had scrawled her name and order in Sharpie.

"I got distracted," he mumbled. She waited for him to elaborate—coffee was a ritual of theirs, after all. But he offered nothing more (he may have actually clenched his jaw), and she had to hide the twist in her stomach, the physical pain at knowing he wasn't being honest with her.

Quiet, maybe from guilt, Jason slipped into the chair across from her at the little kitchen table. Aurum and Argentum had stopped playing and were now staring him down, a distinctly unfriendly look in their eyes.

He looked from them to Reyna. "Hey," he muttered. "Pass me the bag of treats or call your dogs off. They look hungry."

Reyna leaned down to look her dogs in the eye. Hmm. Hmm, hmm. She did love her dogs and their loyalty to her, not to mention their impeccable ability to pick out liars. She scratched them behind the ears and straightened. "Who's Piper?" she asked casually, and Jason almost choked on his coffee.

Swiping his hand over his chin: "Piper?"

"Yeah. The girl you said wasn't in class today. I don't think I know her. Who is she?" Reyna folded her hands on top of her textbook and treated him to her most indomitable _you're not getting out of this one_ stare.

He leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair, his face turning a little pink. "Her name's Piper McLean. She's . . ." He coughed. "I mean, I don't really know her—I see her around a lot, mostly. Y'know, she's in World Mythology, and she's friends with Leo Valdez."

That was not exactly a commendation. She rotated her jaw. "Would I recognize her if I saw her?"

He nodded emphatically. Surely this girl wasn't _that_ memorable? "She has the choppy hair, with feathers and little braids and stuff, and she wears sweaters and scarves all the time. She's unbelievably gor—" But he clamped his mouth shut.

_Unbelievably gorgeous._ Ignoring the kick to the stomach that his cut-short compliment gave her, Reyna ran through her visual memory of the students in Mr. D's class. She did think she remembered a Cherokee girl with choppy hair hanging around Valdez—she had seemed decent enough, certainly pretty, but a little loud with her companion.

"You're sure you don't know her?" Jason asked, like he couldn't believe she had overlooked Piper.

Reyna smoothed the slight crinkles in her textbook pages. "I think I _have_ seen her before, sure."

"What do you think of her?" he pressed.

Her brow creasing, she only shrugged. "I've never talked to her," she said evasively, to avoid saying that she had not planned on doing so, that she hadn't realized it was necessary, and how had this girl come to his attention, anyway?

Jason fell back into silence as he flipped open his copy of the mythology textbook.

This was so wrong, this wall between them. She took a sip of her mocha, which she had a sneaking suspicion Piper had made, and she wanted it to taste awful, but it was as good as usual. With a quiet sigh, she tapped her fingers against the seat of her chair, prompting Aurum and Argentum to back off Jason and his Piper coffee and instead come nose their heads into her hand. She rubbed their short fur fiercely as she reviewed the names of the city-states and their patron deities, but her mind wasn't really on the homework.

It was only Monday. She would watch for Piper around campus this week, she decided. She would even talk to her if she got the chance. And then she could provide Jason with an informed opinion, and maybe present the option of the two of them, an option that had been in her head for so many years.

* * *

With Tuesday early-afternoon sunlight streaming through the student center skylights, Leo tried for the casual Leaning Against The Wall pose outside of the dining hall. Callie was scheduled to come any minute. They'd made plans in class yesterday to have lunch and then hit up the car shop he worked at. He was practically bouncing, he was so excited. She'd sounded so interested, and interesting. And pretty.

Except that so far, there was no sign of her and her interested, interesting prettiness.

Ten minutes later: _Maybe her car broke down_, he thought hopefully, before he remembered that she lived in a dorm that was a three-minute walk from the cafeteria.

Fifteen minutes later: _Maybe she texted me and I missed it_, he thought hopefully, before he checked his phone for the thirty-fourth time and found, again, no messages.

Twenty minutes later: _Maybe I had the day wrong_, he thought.

Half an hour later, Leo was still waiting outside the dining hall.

He glanced at his tricked-out watch. 1:37. Since he no longer had plans, he had to get to a Spanish club meeting at 2:00. Straining his neck for one last look around the student center, he regretfully turned and went in to eat alone. His first instinct was to look around for anyone he knew who might be eating now, and though he didn't see anyone at first, his gaze landed on Frank and Hazel, sitting together at a window table. Two freshmen were much better than no one. He headed for them, throwing a little more bounce into his step than he actually felt.

"What's up, guys?" he called, cheerful and cheeky as he interrupted a Stare Into Each Other's Eyes And Blush session. They glanced up at him; he noticed that Frank looked unhappy to see him. He shrugged this off as he winked at Hazel. "Looking good today."

"Thank you, Leo," she said, blushing even through her dark complexion. Hazel was an old friend—she actually met him through his _bisabuelo_, his great-grandfather, which was weird—but if he flirted with her enough he thought she might relent and go out with him.

Of course, her boyfriend wasn't super hot on that idea. "Didn't you have a date or something today?" Frank asked stiffly.

Leo made a face and shrugged, not really answering the question. "You guys mind if I camp out at your table?" he asked instead. "Just for a little bit, I gotta eat and run."

Frank and Hazel looked back at each other, and they must have developed some sort of weird couple telepathy (did all couples get that? 'cause he was definitely interested), because they didn't actually say anything before Hazel said, "Sure, that'd be fine." The look she gave Frank suggested that their magic telepathy had involved some arguing over this point.

Well, Leo had learned not to look a gift Camaro in the engine. "Great, thanks!" He dumped his jacket onto the chair beside Hazel's and darted off to get some food. Thankfully, since it was just about time to leave for 2:00 classes, there weren't many lines. It took him maybe five minutes to pick up a couple of slices of pepperoni pizza, a huge sweet potato with butter, and a glass of Coke.

On his way back to the table, he saw Callie eating lunch—or snuggling, really, there didn't seem to be any actual food involved—in a corner booth with some guy on the football team. His stomach dropped, but she hadn't seen him and he didn't have time to go over and say anything, so he continued to weave his way back to the freshmen. _Maintain the bounce_, he told himself, but a voice in his head sneered, _Even the desperate, perpetually single girl can't stand you for longer than a day_, and he glared at the butter melting into the sweet potato.

His watch read 1:44 as he set his plate and cup down beside Hazel. Spanish club was two buildings over. Leo did some quick mental math and realized he needed at least seven minutes to get there on time, leaving him nine minutes to eat and get out of the cafeteria. He began to shovel sweet potato into his mouth.

"So I was telling Frank," Hazel offered, since she and her man were both done eating already, "I was thinking about going to one of the swing dancing classes, to see what it's like. It's free, and I think it'd be fun. Would you want to come?"

Frank's jaw clenched. This, Leo thought, was reason enough to want to go.

"Will there be girls there?" he asked through a mouthful of mush.

Hazel nodded. "My friend Gwen goes, and she says there's always more girls than guys, so it might be nice to have an extra guy."

"Huh," he said, swallowing the mush and starting in on the pizza. "Might. When's it?"

"Tonight at eight?"

He looked at his watch without thinking (1:49), and then he remembered that he didn't have his schedule written on it. "I don't think I have anything to do—"

"Homework?" Frank suggested.

"—At least not anything _important_," Leo corrected himself, "so I'll check and see if Piper thinks she'll want someone to talk to at work. But it should be fine." Half of the second slice of pizza disappeared into his mouth.

"Cool!" Hazel smiled.

Frank looked like he thought it was anything but.

"Cool," Leo grinned through a mouthful of the last half-slice. Washing it down with the last of the Coke, he threw on his jacket and picked up his dirty dishes. "See you guys later!" He speed-walked to the conveyor belt, dumped his dishes, and hightailed it out the door to get to Spanish club.

Only freshmen ran to get anywhere—and Leo himself only ran if someone was chasing him—so he just walked quickly as he pulled out his phone. It, like his perfect car, had been a gift from Piper, mostly because she felt he was lacking ways to talk to her. For example, she had expressly said he needed to text her when stuff happened, so that was what he would do. _You work again tonight?_ he texted her.

He knew she was still in the middle of her two-hour class, but she immediately texted back, _Yeah, 8 to close._

_Okay if alone?_ He almost ran into Percy, but the skater wove around him at the last minute.

She answered with another question, one that was very clearly not a yes: _You can't come?_ Then, before he could answer, he got a third. _What if Jason comes?_

His mind filled with images of himself swing dancing with blushing girls with dresses and snake hips. But he could nearly hear the anxiety in her voice, and the thought of letting her down twisted in his stomach. _I can come if you want me to_, he texted back.

Piper, who refused to accept tutoring, who stole from multiple brands so she wouldn't have to ask a sales rep for help, texted back, _Please come._

Leo sighed, the breath of air whipping away in the wind. The blushing girls would have to wait. He texted Hazel, _Sorry, Piper wants company. Maybe next time?_

Hazel was really bad at figuring out technology, so he didn't expect to hear back from her anytime soon. He shot off a brief encouraging text to Piper and then shoved his phone back in his pocket, moments before he came into the blessed heat of the linguistics building. Beautiful. He hated the cold, even when it was just the early fall chill. He bounced down a flight of stairs to get to the equally well-heated lounge, where the members of the campus Spanish club were sprawled over couches and armchairs, with a Spanish movie playing on someone's MacBook and bilingual conversations burbling in the background.

One member was perched on an armchair set slightly away from the rest of the group, her legs crossed primly as she _tick tack_ed at her laptop, her lips barely moving as she whispered to herself. Every strand of dark hair twisted sleekly into her perfect braid; her royal purple button-down blouse creased in exactly the right places to look neat and flattering but intensely intimidating.

Leo _loved_ intimidating. The danger was half the reason he ever bothered to engage the least eligible girl on campus.

"Yo, Reyna," he grinned, hopping onto the armrest she wasn't using. _"¿Como está nuestra presidente ilustre hoy?_" (How is our illustrious president today?)

Her tapping became louder and angrier, but she actually spoke. "Get off the armrest. You'll break it."

Even if it was in distinctly chilly English, it was a better response than he usually got. "_Bien_." (Fine.) He leaned over so that his butt fell off the armrest and onto the seat, squishing up against her side. She shifted away from him. He fell the rest of the way.

"_¿Hace calor aquí, o eres tú?_" Leo tried again (Is it hot in here, or is it you?), sending her a winning grin, but she didn't even look over at him. He peered over her shoulder to see what she was working on—and she snapped the lid shut.

"Is Piper with you?" she asked.

Leo shook his curls. "She's more into French—language of love and all that." He considered adding something about Spanish being romantic too, but he was quickly losing Reyna's attention (and patience quota), so he began to babble, "Well, she knows a little Spanish from me, but not that much. Plus she has an environmentalism class this hour. I didn't know you knew Piper. She never said anything, which is kind of weird, I would have thought she would have, it's kind of a—" Then he remembered that Reyna was dating Jason (or was with him in some capacity), so she probably wouldn't take too kindly to Piper's blush-and-turn-incoherent thing for Jason. "—_not_ that it's a big thing, I just didn't know you knew her, that's cool, you probably know everyone—"

"I wasn't asking your opinion." Reyna cut him off with a chilly look. Then, apparently deciding he had no more information to offer her, she opened her laptop and went back to her homework.

"Who comes to Spanish club to do homework?" he asked, but she didn't respond, and when three of his best pickup lines failed to get a rise out of her, he finally slid off her chair to go try his hand at the girls giggling over a telenovela.

When Leo glanced back, he saw Reyna speaking easy Spanish with a girl sitting across from her. He plastered a grin on his face to mask the stupid small wound. What else was new?

* * *

Even with the totally useless interaction with Valdez, Reyna didn't see Piper all day, but that was typical for a Tuesday. _Whether or not I talk to her is irrelevant,_ she told herself; _I should just talk to Jason._ So she spent Tuesday evening working up her nerve to broach the subject.

They were setting their books on the kitchen table when, as she began to say, "I wanted to ask you something," he jumped towards the door with a bright "I'm gonna go get the coffee, okay?"

She scrutinized his high brows, his grip on the door as he hung halfway out in the hallway. "Want me to go instead tonight?" she offered. "Or come with you?"

He waved her off. "Nah, that's fine. Thanks anyway. Stay here, I'll be right back, bye!"

And then he was gone.

Reyna slowly lowered herself into her chair and, with a sigh, rapped her knuckles in slow 1—2—3 rhythm against her forehead. Aurum pressed himself against her legs, and Argentum whined from behind her. She was well aware that her dogs wouldn't care if Jason fell off the face of the earth, but they knew she was upset about his being gone, and she appreciated their support.

"He'll be right back," she said, as much to herself as to them.

Jason didn't return for two hours.


	3. Dazed

_A/N: Finals theme music: "I'm givin' up, givin' up, hey, hey, givin' up now…" _

_Piper-/Jasper-centric chapter for the fun of it. Hella long, hella rad._

* * *

Piper had had a significant attitude adjustment when she went in to work at 8pm Tuesday night. After Monday night's encounter, she held out hope that she might see Jason again tonight.

She was not disappointed.

"Oh, hey, you're here again," the blond guy called from halfway down the stairs, putting on a casual tone she could see straight through, given how quickly he was tripping down to her floor. There were more people around tonight, most of them in line, but rather than fussing he only took his place at the end of the line, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and exchanging hellos with just about everyone. Leo bounced over to talk to him, since Piper was busy.

Piper was working alone again—the late shift would have been a really lonely one if not for Leo's company—so she was practically breaking a sweat trying to keep the students happy. It was _take an order, take a name, take the money, reassure the people still waiting, throw together the drink, stick it on the counter, call the name as you hustle back to the next customer_. But toes were tapping, not because of the overplayed music coming from the overhead speakers, and she even forgot to palm things, she was in such a rush. What was happening to her?

Granted, she wasn't in such a rush that she forgot to peek around customers' heads every so often to get a look at Jason. God, he was gorgeous. And oddly enough, even though the line was long and barely crawled along, his expression never once creased into irritation.

Slowly, painfully (she stubbed her toe on the fridge at least once, making her hiss French profanities), she worked her way through the line. She didn't recognize any of the people, though she would learn the names of some of the ruder ones after she picked up their things. Small things, you know . . . class rings, car keys, IDs. Trinkets, really.

Then Piper called, "A smoothie for Clarisse," and she turned and it was Jason stepping up to the counter. He seemed to be the last in line, and she couldn't suppress a sigh of relief.

"That glad I could come?" Jason teased before his face turned red. From behind him, Leo looked between them and waggled his eyebrows.

Piper laughed and leaned forward on her elbows, reaching up to twirl one thin braid around her index finger. "I'm sure, Grace," she rolled her eyes, shooting him a crooked smile when he faltered. "Sorry about the wait."

"No, no, it was totally fine," he reassured her, extending one hand and then jerking it back before he actually touched her. She stared at his open palm briefly before returning her gaze to his big blue eyes. "You looked like you were going crazy—I mean, in a good way. Has it been like this all night?"

She shrugged. "I got here an hour ago, and it only became a rush half an hour ago. I think it's the universe conspiring against you," she stage-whispered confidentially.

"Against me?"

"Well, sure, I mean, you're just here for my scintillating conversation, right?" she teased him, pretending to flip her hair. Jason turned bright red, and though he opened his mouth, he didn't deny it. In fact, he didn't say much of anything.

_Oh._ Heat rose in her face, and she could practically feel her wit leaving her.

Thankfully Leo saw the impending train wreck and stepped in. "_Your_ conversation?" he pretended to challenge her, mocking affront. "Beauty Queen, I think you're confused. Sparky here is clearly returning for a second dose of my impeccable punning abilities."

Jason glanced down at his shirt, which bore the lightning-bolt symbol of the Flash—presumably the source of Leo's new nickname. He shrugged.

"So which one is it, Mr. Vice President Guy?" Leo demanded, widening his dark eyes.

He thought about it and then answered, "Yes," a smile stretching the scar on his upper lip.

_He has a snarky side._ Piper turned her head to laugh into her shoulder. When she looked back, he was beaming. Score. She should have taken his order, but . . .

"Shouldn't you have someone else working with you?" Jason asked, his brow creasing in what looked like concern. "I mean, since you're new. Are you allowed to work on your own?"

"Wow, thanks for having so much faith in me!" she teased him, pushing him lightly on the arm. She kept her hands far away from his pockets and his wallet, just in case. "Ask your long-night Reyna; my coffee is flawless, just like me. Or Leo."

Leo struck a pose.

Jason stammered, "No, I didn't—I meant, training, and rushes—"

Leo cackled. Piper threw a mini Sharpie at him.

"No, you're right," she said to Jason. "I actually worked at a coffee shop—well, I made coffee before I started here." By _made coffee_, she meant _palmed stuff from the local coffee shop until she had a full Starbucks station in the kitchen_. Leo still hadn't convinced her to tell him how she managed to nab the name-brand espresso machine. "They just had me make a few things and then declared me good to go."

"They must have been desperate," Leo stage-whispered to Jason. Piper smacked him and palmed his ID at the same time; she would give it back after he apologized. Or stopped embarrassing her. Or really, first, noticed it was missing.

Jason shook his head. "But really, they just let you work alone? Even on your first night?"

Piper shrugged. "Last night was supposed to be dead, which it was. And today I was supposed to be working with Rachel Elizabeth Dare, but she called in sick."

"Sick of _you_, maybe," Leo suggested.

Jason bumped him on the shoulder in reprimand. "You look like you're handling it pretty well, at least," the blond offered her.

She cocked her head and stuck her fists on her hips. "I thought I looked like I was going crazy?"

Leo draped one arm over Jason's shoulders. "Pro tip," he said with a sympathetic grin, "quit when you're behind."

Jason made a strangled noise and shot her a bewildered look, eyes wide, jaw slightly dropped. She smirked, stiffening her shoulders against the laughter she was suppressing.

"I didn't—" he started helplessly. "You're great."

She snorted.

"No, really," he insisted, even though he was turning redder by the syllable, and when she met his gaze, she felt her own face heat up. _Damn it! Calm down!_ she told herself. But she was still staring at the scar, so she distracted herself by picking his wallet out of his left-hand sweater pocket, rifling through it blindly, and sticking it back in his right-hand pocket. There, good. He was just another mark.

"Now you're just looking for free coffee," she accused him playfully. "Sorry, bro, you can compliment me all you want and you'll still have to pay like everyone else." He opened his mouth to protest but she continued, "Now, what can I get for you and your 'lady friend'?" She mimicked Leo's best eyebrow waggle. As far as anyone at Apollo U knew, Jason and Reyna were A Thing, and she would abide by that gossip until proven otherwise.

He either didn't pick up on her innuendo or elected to ignore it. "Same as yesterday," he said. "A mocha for Reyna, extra chocolate, extra whipped cream, and a triple shot for me."

She remembered what he had gotten. Not that she would ever admit it. That would be creepy. "Y'all are boring," Piper said as she scribbled the names and orders on the cups.

"What would you recommend, then?" Jason countered, in a tone that couldn't possibly have been meant as flirty as it sounded. _Wallet, watch, iPhone_, she repeated to herself, all the things of his that _were_ available to her.

"I mix things up," she shrugged. "Last night I made myself a white mocha with caramel. Maybe tonight I'll have a dirty hazelnut chai. I dunno—I live loose. Gotta be flexible." She demonstrated this life philosophy with a sashay of her hips, a crude and overdone imitation of the salsa dancing she'd caught Leo practicing alone more than once.

She knew she was bad at snake hips, but she caught Jason staring at her waist for a beat too long, and when he looked back up, his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. She winked at him.

"We only sell coffee here, bro."

"Oh, dear God," someone groaned from the base of the stairs, and she looked over to see a sickly pale guy looking over at them in clear disdain. She wasn't sure how much of their conversation he was reacting to, but she leaned her chin on one hand and, with a friendly smile, flipped him the bird.

"Octavian," Jason said, disapproving and barely civil. With a nod in tense acknowledgement, the other guy lifted his chin and turned to continue on his way.

"You know him?" Piper asked him in an undertone, her nose wrinkling.

Jason turned back toward her, concern creasing his brow. "A bit. He's the grandson of the head of the music department, and he works for a guy who works for my dad. I wouldn't say we're friends."

"Would _anyone_ say they were friends with him?" Leo countered out loud, with a nasty look in the direction Octavian had gone.

Jason shook his head. "I'm sure he's fine. I just don't . . . know him very well."

"Don't want to, either," Piper said, raising her eyebrows. "Is he usually that much of an ass?"

Jason rotated his jaw and pressed his lips together. "Like I said, I don't know him very well. All I can say is he took issue with all the Central transfers coming in this year."

"What about us transfers?"

"AU was really lenient about it. Look, I'm not really supposed to talk about it," he confessed.

How did he even know in the first place? Was that a student gov thing? But Piper held up her hands and leaned back. "Fine, okay. We'll talk about something other than the random higher-up jerkwad. How about the Freshman Three?"

Leo's whole face brightened with knowing what she meant, but Jason looked at her in confusion. "The Freshman Three?"

"You know, the three questions all the freshmen ask each other. That's how Leo and I always referred to it, anyway." She glanced at him, for a moment terrified that she had misspoken or somehow made this up, but he nodded back at her.

Jason settled forward, leaning both his elbows on the counter. "Okay, okay. What are your Freshman Three?"

She wasn't sure if he actually hadn't heard these before or if he was just humoring her, but either way, she wasn't going to give up his attention. She held up three fingers and touched the first—"Name"—the second—"major"—the third—"hometown," and then she added, "If you get really personal, you ask how many siblings they have. But you have to get through the Three before you can even think about reaching Sibling Question Level."

The blond laughed, nodded, looked her in the eye. "Nailed it. Okay. You wanna go first?"

He meant did she want to answer them first, but in the interest of being ornery: "Sure. What's your name?"

His eyebrows jumped a bit, but he answered, "Jason Grace."

"Phew. Hasn't changed in the last 24 hours. What's your major?"

"Liberal arts," he said, straightening so he could spread his arms as wide as they would go. "I just think everything is so great, I couldn't pick just one thing to study."

She laughed behind her hand. "Liberal arts . . . At Central we called that the burger-flipping major. Hope you're okay with that."

"You have a lot of alternate names for things," he commented.

"We're extremely perceptive, you know."

"Hope you're okay with being wrong sometimes."

Oh, snap. Sass. Her smirking lips parted as she circled her index finger toward him. "Are you generally this untrusting, or am I just lucky tonight?"

"You wish you were lucky tonight," Leo muttered, and Piper leaned over to punch him in the arm, swiping her hair out of her eyes. When she looked back up, Jason was studying the pattern on the fake-marble counter.

"Hometown," she said, and he looked back up at her.

"Apollo," he shrugged.

Here, then. "You're a townie?"

"Yeah." His tone sounded strained, like he wanted to move on, but something had just clicked in her head. He knew Octavian through his dad, he was from around here, and his last name was Grace—

"Wait, are you the president's kid?" she blurted. President Jove Grace, who she'd never so much as seen.

Jason winced.

"Dude! You got the power!" Leo said in awe, looking Jason over as if for the first time. "Have you ever—?"

"Can we not?" Jason asked quickly. "Piper, your turn. What's—?"

"Did I tell you my name?" she asked, scrutinizing him. She was pretty sure she'd kept that tidbit safe. So he had either asked someone, or looked her up, or just paid attention.

He immediately realized his mistake. "Crap. Um, I didn't—It's—"

Leo began to laugh so hard his curls shook, and Piper ducked her head into her shoulder as she laughed too. Jason looked between them and, tentatively, cracked an embarrassed smile.

* * *

"'We only sell coffee here'?" Piper hissed to Leo an hour and a half later, after Jason remembered to order his coffee and left. "What am I, a hooker? I sounded like an idiot!" She buried her hands in her hair and pulled, groaning _aughhhhhhh_.

"I thought it was hilarious," Leo admitted, his voice high and tight with laughter, and she smacked him.

"Sure, _you_ think so, you weren't the one saying it!" she snapped, smiling in spite of herself. "Ugh."

"On the positive side," he offered, "he was totally checkin' out da Beauty Queen booty."

Piper froze. "He was not."

"He was. 'Do she got da booty? She doooo—'"

"Shut up! No way. Do you think? I was just teasing him—"

Leo gave her a _don't even_ look.

She mussed her hair so that tufts and braids stuck out at odd angles. "I just don't want to assume, or get my hopes up, or anything. And he has _Reyna_." Leo liked to make fun of her looks, and she was well aware she didn't put any effort into improving them, and Jason was, well, Jason. Possibly the most flawless human being on the face of the planet. Just because she wanted to think he came for her company didn't mean he actually did.

As much as she wanted to keep debating this, a different thought occurred to her. "Hey, didn't you have a date today? With Callie, yeah?"

Leo smiled, his smile freezing in pace. "Oh, y'know. I showed up, I waited for her, she was already swapping spit with some other guy. Same old."

Piper groaned, her eyebrows drawing together as she reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. "I'm sorry, bro."

He shrugged again. "I'm used to it," he said, and then, deftly returning the topic to her: "That's why I have to get my romance vicariously, aka through you. Which is why _you_ need to make a move on Sparky."

"I—?! Hi, be with you in a sec," she said suddenly to the freshman guy who'd slunk up behind Leo and was looking at her pointedly. "Shut up, I'll be right back," she muttered to Leo before sliding over to the cash register and motioning for the other guy to come forward.

"Hey, how's it going?" he asked, a nervous grin revealing braces.

"Good, you?"

"Good." His hands shook as he pulled out his wallet, and in the two seconds he looked down, Piper palmed the iPod sticking out of his side pocket. Then he looked up, and she jerked her hand back, masking the motion as her straightening the stack of cardboard sleeves. The iPod slipped back into place. Screw it, she didn't need it anyway. "Can I get a, um, pretty—_peppermint_—peppermint mocha? Extra large?"

Leo coughed something that sounded like _compensating_.

"Sure," Piper said, clenching her jaw so that her expression didn't change. She glanced over her shoulder at the menu and added, "It'll be four-fifty."

He passed her a five-dollar bill, and once she'd given him his two quarters back, she turned to make the drink. The freshman coughed and awkwardly sidled along the counter, trying to stay in her line of vision. She glanced up from pouring the milk when he tried, "So, coffee's pretty good."

That was it? She resisted the urge to roll her eyes and sigh. "Yep," she said crisply, and she went back to her work. Leo began to cough uncontrollably.

Not soon enough, Piper passed the boy his girly coffee. He turned a mottled purplish pink as he stammered, "Thanks." She nodded, and he backed away.

Leo's fake coughing turned into honest laughter. "Why do you do customer service?" he wondered aloud as she wandered back over to him.

"Okay, that didn't count," she protested, jerking a thumb toward the cash register. "He was awkward and weird."

"I'm awkward and weird," Leo said. "But in a fabulous, irresistible way."

"That makes two of us," Piper agreed sarcastically. "Which is why there is no way in hell I'm going to get anywhere with Jason."

"What if you got him something?"

Scenarios flashed through her mind, from lifting some snack foods from a gas station to talking a mall employee out of a giant flat-screen TV. "Somehow I don't think he would appreciate my methods," she admitted quietly.

"Then change your methods," he suggested. "We're both working grownups. Spend a little cash, it won't kill you."

"I don't like buying things."

"Yeah, so I gather."

No, she _really_ didn't like buying things. Because saving up money and then blowing it on something she'd forget about in two weeks was wasteful, which Leo knew. And because spending hard-earned money felt a lot like what she saw her dad's people doing to promote him, which Leo sort of knew. But mostly because getting caught stealing (which, granted, happened less often now that she was good at it) was the only sure way of getting her dad to return her calls, which, if Leo knew, he didn't acknowledge.

For once, the two of them fell into silence.

* * *

Wednesday afternoon, Piper walked into World Mythology at Leo's side, in stitches and practically falling over each other laughing as she recounted exactly how she had convinced her roommate, Annabeth's, boyfriend Percy to try a skateboarding trick that had landed him on his butt in front of Annabeth.

"He spent the next fifteen minutes just rubbing his a—" At that moment, Piper locked eyes with Jason, who was watching her from his seat in the front row. Her laughter caught in her throat.

"Hey, Piper," Jason said with a wave and a smile.

In a daze, Piper didn't even realize she was smiling until she felt her hand waving in return and her lips forming the words "Hey, Jason." Oh, god. She was so screwed.

Leo bounced forward, refusing to be ignored. "Hey, Jason. Hey, Reyna," he added, beaming at the girl on Jason's right, and Piper realized for the first time that the president was there, eyes almost as dark as Leo's as she looked the two troublemakers over, conspicuously ignoring Leo's greeting.

Evidently used to this, Leo hooked his arm in Piper's and dragged her over to their seats in the third row back. They had no sooner pulled out their seats than Dylan, one of the more annoying football jocks, dragged his chair over and sat on it backwards. She looked for Leo's help, but he had jumped over the fourth-row table to talk to some sophomore girls. Which meant she was on her own with a boy that referred to himself as "the D." Someone shoot her now.

"You join a sorority yet?" he asked her, stretching so that his massive biceps bulged.

Giving him an unimpressed look, she pulled her knees to her chest and stretched her legs over the tabletop. "No," she said for the billionth time. "Like I've told you, I was a Greek at Central, but I don't live on campus here, and frankly I have better things to do with my time."

"Like what? Visit the local rez?" said some snotty girl from across the way.

Piper balled her fists. _Starting fights during class is frowned upon_, she told herself in a forced calm tone.

Dylan, who had smirked at the remark, now wanted to get back to the original subject. "I'm asking because I know there's an empty spot in our sister org, and we're gonna have a party tomorrow night, so if you want to come—"

"You know, I am so good," she cut him off. "Thanks anyway, Dill."

"It's 'the D.'"

"I think the pickle reference is more accurate," she said before she pulled out her favorite green Sharpie and began to doodle obscenities on the table.

Dylan lingered just long enough that she turned to give him a look, but she caught the eye of Jason behind him. Jason was watching them with a slightly drawn expression, and Piper threw him an eye-rolling _can you believe this guy_ look before she shoved Dylan's chair so hard he fell over. _Whoops_, she thought with zero regret.

Of course, that was right when Mr. D walked in. "Looks like third row is volunteering for a heart-to-heart with campus police. Congratulations."

Piper looked over to see Leo flick his lighter off. "What else is new?" he shrugged, tossing her a sideways grin.

The adjunct professor made a wide sweeping motion toward the classroom door. Piper drew her legs off the table, and she and Leo took their good sweet time sauntering out the door. It flashed through her mind to trail her fingers along Jason's notebook as she passed, but Reyna was right there, and she lost her nerve.

* * *

That night at work, Piper's last shift for the week, Leo had to leave early (for some girl or another), and he hadn't been gone ten minutes when Dylan leaned up against the counter. Piper gave him a tired look and sighed, "What can I get you?"

His crooked grin boded ill for her. "Coffee's fine, but listen, I really think you should come tomorrow night. It'd be fun, and you—"

"I told you, thanks but no thanks," she stressed, backing away and holding up her hands. "I have stuff to do—"

"Like what? Work? This place will be closed," he challenged her, gesturing sharply to the sign on her right that said exactly that. "And we both know you won't be studying."

"She'll be with me," said someone new, and in a moment of terror Piper dreaded to know who it was—but she looked past Dylan and saw Jason stepping off the staircase, his expression unreadable as he neared Nectar and Ambrosia. Dylan turned, and a little bravado drained from his demeanor.

"You?" Dylan asked, disbelieving.

"Yeah, me." Jason stopped by the cash register, where he crossed his arms—his _fine_ arms, Piper couldn't help but notice, with biceps just as defined as Dylan's but more humbly hidden. Her stomach twisted in a way that wasn't altogether unpleasant.

Focus. Right. Dylan and Jason. The polar opposite football players having a standoff during her shift.

She jerked out of her stomach-twisting thoughts in time to hear the student VP say calmly, "We're having dinner at my place. So, sorry, but she's busy."

Dylan looked between him and her; she shrugged and gave him a smug smile. He rotated his jaw, muttered something unflattering, and backed away. Once he was out of sight, Jason turned to Piper.

"Your lack of faith in me is heartwarming," she said drily.

"Sorry," he said immediately, and sincerely, as far as she could tell. "I'm sure you were fine, I just get a little bit of a hero complex sometimes."

If it had been anyone else, she would have been royally perturbed, but for some reason she was a little bit pleased that he cared enough to try to help her out.

"And, I mean, of course you don't have to come over," he said, but he hesitated, and then . . . "But, um, you'd be more than welcome if you did want to."

Piper stared at the blond young man standing on the other side of the counter, a thousand emotions exploding in her at once and heat blooming on her face. Oh god oh god oh god. Was this an offer of a date? Was she, a number-one thieving vandal, being invited over for dinner with the student gov vice president (coincidentally also the university president's son)? Where was Leo when she needed him?

Jason was waiting, and the longer she stared in silence, the redder he became. Eventually he looked down at his hands and mumbled, "Forget I even—"

"Sure," she blurted, and his head jerked up. Quickly she clarified, "Sure, I'll come. I mean, you offered, and it's probably better than whatever I would order from takeout, so why not?" She tried to sound flippant, but every muscle tensed in her excitement. How was this even happening? How had she landed a date with the most—?

Wait. Shit. Her stomach dropped.

Maybe this wasn't a date, in the formal romantic sense. He'd invited her _over_, not _out_. He probably had a roommate, maybe more than one. Plus there was the Reyna factor, always the Reyna factor. Maybe he wanted to be friends; friends could have dinner, right?

But she didn't want to admit she'd jumped to conclusions, even such an appealing one, so she just said, "Maybe Leo could come too? He and I usually have dinner together, so I'd hate to leave him in the lurch. Mostly because he can't cook to save his life."

Jason laughed and rolled his shoulders. "Yeah, sure. Bring Leo, he's great."

Piper tried not to fixate on the fact that he liked her best friend. Or, conversely, that he didn't seem upset to have another person along on their not-a-date. "Thanks. That won't be awkward, will it?"

"Nah," he said, but he looked unconvinced until an idea occurred to him. "Hey, what if Reyna joined us? Would that be okay? It'd be two and two that way."

He didn't specify who was pairing up with whom. She shifted her weight, pretending her heart didn't sink even deeper. High heart rate, low hopes. But no way was she dropping this opportunity. "Sounds great," she said, and she smiled at him.

* * *

Reyna still didn't know much about Piper, except that she'd been kicked out of class that day. And she really needed to get on that. Three nights in a row, Monday Tuesday Wednesday, Jason had seemed a little more eager than usual to go out in the dark to get their coffee, and it didn't escape Reyna's notice that his trips got progressively longer. And the third night, he came in red-faced, and it wasn't from the cold.

"I have a date with Piper!" he blurted as soon as he came in the door, a grin exploding over his face.

Reyna froze, one hand extended to take her cup. "What?"

"I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure if she'd take me up on it," he admitted—"and to be honest it just kind of happened, but I asked her out for dinner and she said yes!"

"Hey, congrats." She forced a smile and bumped him with her shoulder, the closest she came to hugging. "You two will have a great time." Without her.

But then Jason started to rub the back of his neck in that way that meant he was hiding something. "Well . . . actually I don't know if it counts as a _date_ date. She wants to bring Leo."

Her nose wrinkled. "A third wheel. Won't that be awkward?"

"_Welllll,_" he began.

Oh, _no._ He didn't.

"I kind of said you would join us," he rushed, pleading at her with big blue eyes. 'It would be sort of like a double date—only not," he backtracked hastily at the expression on her face. "More like, just in case it doesn't work out, it's not just me and Piper sitting there staring at the clock."

Reyna backed up, holding up her hands and shaking her head. "Look, Piper on her own is maybe okay, but Leo? No. I would never be able to get rid of him. Besides, I'm not even big on going out. The three of you would have way more fun at the restaurant without me."

"Oh." Jason's eyebrows jumped. "Did I forget to say?"

Oh, no. She pressed her fingers to her temple. "Say _what?_"

He gave her a guilty smile. "We're having dinner here."

She stared at him. "_Here_ here?"

"_Here_ here."

She was struck by the urge to throw a brick at his head. "Why?" she demanded, pivoting to look around the apartment. There were piles of books in the corner, she needed to dust, they hadn't vacuumed since they moved in last month . . .

"I thought it would be nice for her to see where we live," he protested. "And she mentioned she's a vegetarian, so it'd be easier to make that here than to try to find a restaurant that has decent veggie options."

Those were decent reasons, but if the trio came here, she would have to either lock herself in her room or leave the apartment to escape them, neither of which sounded enjoyable. Her only real option was to socialize. She made an angry noise at the back of her throat.

"Please?" Jason pleaded.

Another angry noise, and she glared at his hairline, but then: "Fine," with a grumpy swig of extra-chocolate mocha. "But you owe me."

Jason grinned, a completely thrilled grin, and he burst forward to envelop her in a tight hug. Her face was pressed against his chest as he praised her virtues: "Thank you so much, Reyna! You're the best, you're awesome, you won't regret this, I swear . . ."

She laughed a little, a nervous warm breath against his cotton T-shirt. "Okay, okay," she mumbled, and as she returned the hug some of the regret drained out of her.

They pulled apart; Jason looked more excited than she'd seen him in, well, ever.

"So you had better help me clean this place up," she said, half an order. "When is this dinner, anyway?" She might be able to get everything cleaned in a week or two. And the time would give her a little space to become used to the idea.

"Tomorrow night."

"_Tomor—?!_" She pitched one of Aurum's squeaky toys at Jason's head.


	4. Plummeting

_A/N: And now . . . the double not-a-date._

* * *

"If you don't get that vacuum fixed, I swear to God . . ." Reyna's voice trailed off, the threat even stronger left unspoken. Eyes wide, Jason pushed the vacuum cleaner onto the carpet and began to inspect its underside, coughing a little at the malodorous smoke drifting from it.

She'd gotten up at five in the morning to get today's student gov work done, _with no coffee_ no less, and as soon as they'd finished classes she'd dragged them both back to the apartment to clean. Of course, this was when all the cleaning appliances decided to implode for no reason. If Piper and Leo showed up and found their place a mess, she would never live it down.

Crouching down, she slid a big stack of textbooks into her arms and with a groan stretched back to a standing position, leaning back a little to counterbalance. "Time is it?" she grunted.

She couldn't see him, but he must have looked at a clock somewhere, because he answered, "Five past four."

Not even two hours left, and they still had to make dinner. Shit. She rolled her head in frustration (and felt her braid smack lightly against her spine, a reassuring solid presence), and then she hefted the books into her room, where she balanced them on one knee as she stuck them back in their alphabetical-order places. "Have you decided what we're going to make?" she called.

"What are the options?" he called back, which she could have predicted. It was his response anytime she asked him what he wanted for dinner.

"Vegetarian?"

"Yeah!"

She bit her lower lip as she slid _The Art of War_ in between Stevenson's _Treasure Island_ and Tolkien's _The Hobbit_. "We can make stir fry pretty easily, pasta, burritos, quiche. I can get tofu for stuff that's usually meat-based . . ."

"Uh, stir fry!"

The last book in place, Reyna hurried back into the living room for the next stack. As she passed by Jason wielding a screwdriver, she nudged him with her toe. "Did you just pick that one because I said it first?"

He grinned up at her, perfect in every way. "Is that a bad way to pick a menu?"

The corners of her lips tipped upward. "Just need to decide," she said, heading back to the bookcase. "Now how's the vacuum coming?"

As she knelt to pick up the books, he twirled the screwdriver between his fingers. It would have been an impressive trick if he hadn't flipped it too hard and accidentally thrown it into the carpet. "We'll try it out and see."

"I want to hear the roar of clean carpet," she warned him, and he saluted her. But when she returned five minutes later, books exchanged for a Mr. Clean magic eraser, he was still fiddling. "Where is my roar of clean carpet?"

"It's coming, gimme a second"—but Jason's voice was tight with tension, and a headache began to pinch at the base of Reyna's neck. If she had to deal with a broken vacuum on top of all this . . .

She crouched by the wall and began to scrub at smudges on the paint. Fingerprints, black scuffs from moving furniture, dust, dirt. Her fingernails dug into the sponge, her fingers bent stiff at the knuckles, as she scoured every stain away. _A home reflects on the people who live there,_ Hylla used to say, and since she was the only member of Reyna's family who'd stuck around long enough to be reflected on—

Jason muttered something that sounded like a profanity and threw the screwdriver on the ground. "If that didn't get it," he said through gritted teeth as he pressed the power switch into the ON position. Reyna turned to watch, ready to run for the fire extinguisher if necessary, but the vacuum sputtered into being, sans flames or foul-smelling smoke this time. He blew his breath out through his teeth.

"Got it," he told her over his shoulder.

She waved for him to move. "So vacuum. Make sure you move _all_ the furniture and get under—"

"I am 21 years old. I have vacuumed before, Reyna."

"Last time you didn't move the couch."

He sighed. "Fine." As he straightened and began to push the rumbling device over the carpet, Reyna pressed her hand into the small of her back and arched backward, trying to rid herself of the ache that was spreading through her whole body. Ugh.

And it wasn't just the time frame and the complications; she could at least be honest with herself about that fact. It was the whole situation. She paused in her frantic scrubbing to admire the muscles of Jason's back and shoulders, moving with the vacuum, pulling on his T-shirt._ I am so close,_ she sighed to herself, _yet so far away. _

Jason vacuumed through the living room, the hall, and both bedrooms. When the roar of the vacuum faded out, he came back out to unplug it and asked, "Um, hey, did you notice that the pipe to the sink is spraying water all over the bathroom?"

Reyna shouted a word she wouldn't want her professors to hear and bolted over to attempt damage control.

* * *

The apartment doorbell had long been broken, so it was two resounding knocks that made Jason and Reyna jump. "That's them!" he hissed, all but shoving the wall mirror into her arms as he fell over himself trying to get to the door. She hung it in its place, smoothed her shirt down the front and sides, raised her chin, and glided out toward the door as Jason opened it.

Piper, as she feared, looked like a goddess had blessed her wardrobe, even in perfectly casual dress. Her snowboarding jacket somehow framed her curves in an obscenely pretty way, over an equally flattering cami and well-cut jeans tucked into boots. In a moment of insecurity, Reyna wished she had put on something better than her favorite purple button-down and a charcoal-grey pencil skirt.

"Hey, Jason! Hey, Reyna! Looking fine, milady." Leo bounced in, grinning and way too excited for 6:00 on a Thursday night. It looked like he had tried and failed to slick his curls into submission, and he was wearing a plain, but at least clean, orange T-shirt and jeans. By contrast, Jason had donned a cool blue button-down and pressed dress pants. (Every so often she caught him fidgeting with his outfit, but he looked divine.)

"Hey, Leo! Hey, Piper," Jason said, a dazed grin spreading across his face. "Did you find us okay?"

"Yea, we have a rad GPS," Leo butted in, with a look of smug pleasure that told Reyna he'd probably had something to do with the device. Fixed it with duct tape after breaking it, maybe.

Jason took Piper's jacket, and as he hung it on the back of the door, Piper and Reyna watched each other, sized each other up. Leo fidgeted and bounced and awkwardly looked around until the girls took a step toward each other.

Reyna held out her hand first. That made her the bigger person, right? "I'm Reyna."

Piper looked at her hand and then took it, her grip just confident enough to suggest worry. "Piper. Piper McLean. We're in World Myth together, right?"

Reyna nodded, wishing Jason would return to her side a little faster. "All four of us, yes." The other girl had a pleasant voice, easy to listen to, and Reyna considered that she could see why Jason was so taken with her. Not that a pretty face and a pretty voice changed the fact that Reyna was taken with Jason herself.

"Do you guys have a dog?" Leo asked. "It smells like dog in here."

He didn't seem to actually mind, but Reyna had to clench her jaw. The apartment smelled like dog? Shit! Way to come off as crazed, unclean dog freaks. "I have two greyhounds. They're in their kennels right now."

Leo and Piper both perked up a little. "Ooh," Leo said. "Can I see them?"

As satisfying as it would be to see Aurum and Argentum sink their teeth into him . . . Her eyes narrowed in what was almost a sarcastic smile. "It would be best to leave them alone. They're not exactly friendly."

"Don't worry, _I'm_ friendly," he said with a suggestive wink.

"We've got dinner ready if you guys are hungry," Jason started, gesturing toward the kitchen, to their right. Right on cue, Piper's stomach growled, and she gave an embarrassed laugh.

"I'm super hungry," Leo agreed with a grin. Reyna half expected him to go in and help himself, but he only bounced and waited until she glided into the kitchen herself, and then the other three trailed along behind her like ducklings.

"I—we—made stir fry. It's vegetarian," she said to Piper, who visibly brightened, "and pretty healthy besides. There's green peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, chickpeas, water chestnuts, egg, basil, and rosemary. Bit of soy sauce. I hope that's okay."

"Sounds perfect," Piper enthused.

Leo said nothing, but he was giving bedroom eyes to the glass bowl.

Jason gave a subtle thumbs-up.

Reyna picked up the first plate from the stack on the counter, peeled the warm plastic wrap off the top of the glass bowl, spooned a serving onto her plate, and then moved out of the way and set the plate down at her place, the head of the table. She said aloud, "And we have milk, water, juice, Coke, help yourselves," as she pulled out a glass cup and poured herself some skim milk.

She glanced over, saw Jason serving Piper her portion of stir fry, and turned away to take her first deep swig. This was going to be a long evening.

* * *

Jason shook his head, combing his fingers through his short hair. "It's really not that hard. Anyone could do what I do."

"Says the _starter_ quarterback," Leo pointed out. "I think you're confused, man."

Piper traced her index finger over Jason's biceps, apparently for the sole purpose of making him blush. Then she blushed too, and she jerked her hand away from his arm. "Sorry."

He made a muffled noise that sounded like "It's okay."

"Anyway," she started again, "what I was going to say was, I'd like to see you try to teach Leo to play football."

Jason grinned, while Leo wheeled his hands in front of himself defensively. "Beauty queen, I told you, sports and the Super-Sized McShizzle do not mix."

"Because he's a klutz," Piper confided to Jason, her smile glinting in her eyes, teasing but friendly.

"I am not! I just don't have to be able to kick a field goal to fix a broken carburetor. And a field goal isn't going to save you on a back road when your car breaks down."

"Excuse you, my car is perfect."

Reyna watched in silence, tracing circles on the underside of the table. Piper and Leo (and Jason too, though she hadn't realized it before) had a gift for witty banter; she suspected they could go back and forth for hours without getting bored. Unfortunately, neither wit nor social confidence came easily for her, and while her eyes sometimes creased in a tense almost-smile, she spent most of the time mentally measuring the ever-decreasing space between Jason and Piper.

It was pathetic. At least she could admit that to herself.

"Can we sit in the living room?" Leo asked suddenly, glancing back and forth between Jason and Reyna like a child who wasn't sure if Dad or Mom would be more likely to say yes. (The marital comparison kicked Reyna in the stomach as soon as she thought it.)

"Sure," Jason said easily, and he scooted his chair back so he could help Piper up. The two of them took the couch (_the loveseat,_ sang Reyna's smug subconscious), leaving Leo and Reyna to the two armchairs.

"You have a really nice place," Piper said, looking appreciatively around the largest room of the apartment. "You keep it up really well. Mine's usually a pigsty."

Jason laughed and shifted toward her with a well-placed stretch. "You should have seen us running around ea—" he began, but he cut off when, warm-faced, Reyna gave him a sharp look and shook her head no.

Leo caught the motion. "Oh, no," he gasped, slapping his hands on his armrests and leaning toward her in mock horror. "Student government . . . occasionally has a messy apartment? Say it isn't so. I may need to stage a coup now."

Piper and Jason laughed, but Reyna's fake-laugh quota was already run out, and she shot him a cold look. "Some people take pride in having things put together."

"You know, if I were in charge of the alphabet, I'd put _U_ and _I_ together," he said brightly, but Reyna was having none of it anymore.

"You don't know me," she snapped.

He held up his hands in surrender, those stupid trickster eyebrows going a mile high. "Whoa there, _reina_. I was kidding. You do know what _kidding_ is, right?"

Jason leaned forward and muttered, "Not helping, man."

In one fluid motion, Reyna got up from her armchair, her full-body ache back in full force. "I'm going to do dishes," she said stiffly, but Jason gave her sad eyes and waved for her to stay.

"Come on, Leo'll shut up," he promised. "Ten more minutes. The dishes can wait."

She highly doubted that Jason could actually convince Leo to shut up, but she sank back into her seat, the muscles in the small of her back pinching tight. She gritted her teeth together and kept herself angled toward Jason and Piper, away from Leo. Surprisingly, the couple caused her less physical pain.

"So did you guys go for N-and-A coffee every night, or did you start that just when I started working there?" Piper teased Jason.

He laughed and settled closer to her. "Don't flatter yourself. Reyna just doesn't like strong coffee."

This was a relatively safe topic. "If it tastes like coffee, I don't want to taste it," Reyna agreed.

Leo made a slight whining noise, like Aurum did when he was being taunted with a treat he couldn't have. Piper gave him a look. "You've tried the shops in town, then?" she said to the hosts.

"We don't care for them as much." Reyna smoothed the fabric on her armchair.

"'We'?" Jason asked, shooting her a go-easy smile. "_You_, maybe."

She shrugged unapologetically. "What can I say? I have high standards." Not just for coffee, either.

Whining again, Leo threw his hands up. "Okay, if I'm not allowed to flirt and I'm not allowed to be funny, is it okay if I go heat up some of the leftovers?"

Piper's jaw dropped. "We just finished eating! Where did you put it?"

"Hollow leg, I think," he grinned, shaking his left foot.

Anything to get him out of her living room. Reyna waved him off in assent. "Sure. Do you need a new plate?"

"Nah, I'll just rinse the one from dinner."

Her nose wrinkled, but hey, it was one less dish to wash, so she didn't complain. Settling back into her armchair, she sighed and turned to join in Jason and Piper's conversation about possible alternate "Freshman Threes," whatever that was. From the kitchen she heard dishware clanking on countertop, the microwave door opening and closing with a suction-y thunk, the buttons beeping, and the machine humming as it warmed the food. Standard enough.

"Favorite breed of dog, allergies, and movie you'd most like to throw out a window," Piper was suggesting, laughter in her voice, when Reyna heard the popping.

"Everything okay in there?" Jason called.

"Uh, I think so," Leo called back. "Uhh . . . does your microwave normally make weird—?" Then he yelped a strangled Spanish profanity as something exploded.

Reyna bolted out of her chair and threw herself forward, sprinting into the kitchen, Jason and Piper right behind her. Dirty smoke streamed out of the door cracked open; flames arched into the cabinet. Leo leaned into the sink, filling up a cup of water as fast as he could.

Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god.

Her stomach plummeting to her feet, hairs standing up on the back of her neck, Reyna swallowed anger and fear and immediately jerked into control. "Put down the water, it'll make it worse!" she barked at Leo. Then, to Jason: "Get the fire extinguisher out of the closet! Now!"

He ran for it. Piper froze in place: "What can I do?"

The smoke detector began to screech, methodical beeps piercing Reyna's eardrums. "Turn that off," she yelled over the noise. Piper nodded and pulled out a chair from around the kitchen table, Jason returned with the fire extinguisher, and Reyna shoved Leo out of the way so she could hose down her microwave and flaming cabinets.

The foam immediately suffocated the fire, but the cabinets were still glazed dirt-grey from the smoke in the air. The smoke alarm squealed out of existence, and Piper jumped to the ground with the plastic white circle in her hand. Jason reached over the sink to open the window. Reyna stood there breathing heavily for a moment, the canister shaking in her hands.

Leo, pale as he held out his hands, insisted apologetically, "I don't know what happened, I swear I didn't—"

"I need you to leave," Reyna said.

"I'm not that—"

"Now," she said.

For a moment no one moved, and then Jason touched his hand to the small of Piper's back. "Let's get your jacket," he apologized, and they walked to the closet together, speaking in undertones. Still looking at Reyna, Leo backed up, his hands slowly falling back to his sides. She didn't move.

Jason opened the apartment door, leaned in to kiss Piper on the cheek (they both turned bright pink), and then let her and Leo out. Only after he'd shut the door did Reyna move, setting down the fire extinguisher with a shudder and dragging herself back into the living room, where she dropped into her armchair, throat burning from smoke and frustration, and hid her face in her hands.

After a minute she felt Jason's hand, solid on her back. Between her shoulder blades, much higher than it'd been on Piper's. "Thank you for doing this for me," he said quietly. "I'm sorry."

Keeping her hands over her face, she mumbled, "Let the dogs out. I need to go for a run."


	5. Boundaries

_A/N: Happy new year, I'm late updating this, as usual._

* * *

The next day's World Mythology class was awkward. Understandably so. After all, Reyna was refusing to acknowledge Leo's existence entirely, and Jason invited Piper to come sit on his other side. And she did, and the entire class pretended not to see them holding hands under the table. (The entire class other than Leo, who occasionally elbowed her, hummed "Here Comes the Bride," and tossed little metal rings at them.)

Reyna wanted to shoot herself.

Thankfully, Annabeth picked up on her foul mood and enlisted Percy to help distract her. As soon as Mr. D told them all to break up in groups to discuss the chapter, the pair pulled Reyna over, preventing Jason and his new best friend from asking her to join them. Needing to be distracted wasn't her first choice for life situations, but she took the grace extended to her.

"Are we supposed to memorize any of this for the test?" Percy asked. Bless him. His obliviousness came in handy sometimes.

Annabeth flipped through the chapter, sucking on the inside of her cheek. "The Greek gods, major and minor, I think, and the name changes when they went Roman."

"That should be fine," Reyna said. The Roman versions had always come more easily to her, and half of the things in this town were named after the Greeks, making it in effect a cheat sheet for remembering those.

From behind her, Jason said something in an undertone that made Piper laugh out loud. Reyna rotated her jaw.

"Reyna," Annabeth prompted, "what do you think?"

Shit. Her attention had wandered. "About what?"

"I thought the chapter sounded a little biased," she repeated promptly. "You know, bitter about Rome conquering Greece."

"Oh." Quickly she reviewed in her mind—she remembered strong language. _Violent, ruin, denigrate_. "I thought it was unfair to the Romans. I mean, they were able to blend all these different cultures and mythologies, which takes skill."

"It takes skill to steal other people's ideas?" Percy countered.

Reyna could feel the defensiveness rising, welling in her gut, hot and angry, even though she knew full well this argument wasn't worth it. "Yes. Any good government has to do that to some extent. And Rome was solid, it lasted."

"But the Greeks came up with most of that stuff first."

"But it never would have gotten anywhere if not for the Romans."

"Guys," Annabeth started, but Mr. D thunked his travel mug of not-coffee on the tech cart, effectively cutting all discussion short.

"Did we come to a consensus?" the adjunct asked, looking around. He was met with silence. "No? Great. I don't really care. Read, don't read. I love failing people." He gave a very fake smile; a few of the freshmen who'd never had him before looked at each other with terror in their eyes. "Peter Johnson."

"It's Percy Jackson," Percy said flatly.

"You plan to fail my class?"

"Not if it means I have to take it again."

"Good, then we're agreed. Don't slack on this project, then."

"What p—?"

Then Mr. D dropped a stack of paper onto the tech cart, the muffled _thud_ making the cart shake. "Syllabus change. I'm canceling the fifth exam, the essay-based one—"

Half the class cheered, wolf-whistled, attempted to club-dance in their chairs.

He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his loud leopard-print shirt until they quieted. "—and I'm replacing it with a 15-page research paper."

The cheers immediately died. Someone, maybe Callie, squeaked, "What?"

"Fif_teen_?" Percy hissed at Annabeth, who smacked one hand on his arm as she scribbled notes about the new assignment.

"Can we write it in groups?" suggested a girl named Silena from the back.

"Nope. No groups," Mr. D said. He handed one of the folders to Jason, who immediately stood and began to pass them out. Reyna took hers without looking him in the eye and glanced over it: the assignment seemed straightforward enough. "I want you to submit topics individually by Friday. Turabian style, 12-pt Times New Roman, 1.5-spaced. Minimum 10 sources, and 7 should be print."

A guy in the back choked.

"There's a campus library," said the prof. "Time to go say hello to it." He took a swig from his travel mug. "Now, someone tell me three of the factors that led to Greece falling to Rome. Annabelle."

* * *

Piper felt bad for Leo: at the end of class he jumped the table to try to apologize again to Reyna, only for her to sweep past him, chin high as she pointedly carried on talking to Annabeth and Percy. But she didn't feel so bad for him that her own mood was dampened, because she was on a hell of a high. Not an actual high; she tried drugs in high school once and hated feeling out of control. No, this high was pure endorphins, brought to her from Jason's hand in hers and Jason's eyes and Jason's smile and, oh god, _Jason_.

This was stupid. She felt like singing, dancing, smiling all day long. How was that even possible? Stupid, stupid. But she wouldn't have traded it for anything.

"Want to do something tonight?" the blond asked, hiking his book bag over his shoulder as he fell into step on her right, walking out the door with her.

_Yes!_ she wanted to laugh, but she cocked her head and tugged on the back of his bag. "Yeah, because last night went so well."

He chuckled, self-consciously rubbing the back of his neck. "Okay, yeah, that could have ended on a better note. But if we went somewhere where we were less likely to catch things on fire . . . ?" He looked down at her hopefully, his scar crinkling as he smiled.

Someone tugged one of Piper's braids, and she turned to see Leo bounce up on her left, hooking his arm through hers. "So I hear we're going out?"

Piper glanced up at Jason, indecisive. She didn't blame Leo at all for last night, but she had kind of been hoping to have some time alone with the VP. "I—"

"Sure," Jason offered, squeezing her hand lightly as if to say _it's okay_. "Reyna's going out running tonight, so she can't make it, but we can be a trio, that's cool too."

She wondered if Reyna had instructed him to say that.

"What time?" Leo asked. "I have all these ladies asking for dates . . ." He gestured broadly to the wide berth their female classmates were giving him.

"I'm basically free," Jason shrugged. "What time works for you guys?"

"Anytime after five," Piper said, and Leo nodded.

"Want to do six again?" asked the blond.

"Sounds good, bro." Leo clapped Jason on the shoulder and darted away; he was late for calc, if Piper remembered his schedule right. Not that she was complaining—this left her with an exemplary guy in an emptying hallway.

"Where do you want to go?" he prompted her.

_McDonald's_, she was tempted to joke, but she suppressed the urge just in case he took her seriously. "Surprise me," she teased, tugged him by the bag again. It would be interesting to see what he planned, what he thought she might like. (She and Leo. But mostly her.)

"Oh. Okay." He looked off into the distance and stroked his chin, pretending to ponder the options.

She shoved him playfully. "Come on. There's like three restaurants in town. Pick one."

He looked back at her, a gleam in his eye. He grinned and rolled his shoulders. "Oh, I'm not limiting myself to this town. I'll pick you up at six, then?"

"Sounds perfect." She beamed, rocked up on her toes, and immediately wanted to kick herself. What was she, a lovesick 12-year-old? But she couldn't wipe the smile off her face.

He beamed as well. "Perfect," he echoed. "So where are you heading now?"

She had to think about it. _Lemme see, it's Friday, 3:00, we just got out of World Myth . . ._ "I'm going to Cell Bio. You?"

He grimaced. "Work. Namely _paper_work. Goodie."

Piper patted him on the arm. "Just think of the wonderful evening ahead of you," she suggested, throwing one arm up around his shoulders to tug him into her. _Teasing, teasing, always teasing,_ she reminded herself, trying to maintain some mental distance from the smell of him. "There'll probably be witty banter, you know, yummy food, kitchen appliances in flames—"

"No, we're trying to _avoid_ that one," Jason laughed. But he made no effort to extricate himself from her almost-hug, which was a good sign.

* * *

At 6 pm exactly, Jason pulled into the short driveway and parked behind a dilapidated Geo. The lights were on outside the tiny house, but no one was at the window and there were no characteristics distinguishing it as Piper and Leo's. He glanced at the address Piper had scribbled on a Post-It note.

Yes, he had the right place. He strained to see inside, looking for some hint as to what she expected of him. _Is she coming out? Or should I go get her? _he wondered, his fingers drumming an anxious beat against the steering wheel. Honking was rude. _I'll just go up,_ he decided.

Taking a deep breath, he kneed open his door, buried his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and made his way to the door.

_Please be here_, he prayed, and he pressed his thumb to the translucent doorbell. From inside he heard the muffled _ding-a-dongggg_, followed by a high-pitched "go get it!" and the pounding of feet, and then the door opened, Annabeth leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe.

"Hi," Jason said in surprise. "Are you housesitting for them?"

She gave him a strange look. "I am half of 'them.'"

He squinted.

"Piper and I live here. Leo lives in—well, he basically lives here, but he sleeps at his own place."

Piper and Leo weren't roommates? This was news. He had just assumed they had an arrangement like his and Reyna's, the platonic best friends roommateship. Okay. Quick adjustment of worldview—and he was good.

"You want to come in?" Annabeth offered, but then from further inside the house Piper called, "I'm ready, I'm coming!"

A door slammed, and Piper flew into the hall, and if Jason had thought she looked amazing on Thursday he was absolutely floored now. She was rarely one to dress up, but she'd put on a slinky green shirt over a short, flared black skirt and tights. Her little black heels clicked on the linoleum. When she noticed he was staring she turned a little pink and ran her fingers through her shiny hair, ruffling in exactly the right places. Had he ever met anyone who looked more gorgeous without trying?

"Wow," said Jason.

Annabeth and Piper shared some sort of secret girl communication, their eyes crinkling and their lips turning up almost in sync. The former swatted the latter on the rear and then walked away, leaving the two blushing idiots in the foyer.

"Did you find the house okay?" Piper asked her feet.

"Yeah," Jason told his own. It was safer than trying to make eye contact; looking at her somehow made him incoherent. He screwed up his courage to glance up at her and say, "You look really nice."

He had hoped to keep the awe out of his voice, but he didn't do a very good job, and she seemed to mistake it for surprise. She planted one hand on her hip and cocked her head with a playful smile. "What, unlike all the other times you've seen me?"

"No, that wasn't what I—" he started, anxiety making a little ball in his gut, but then she began to laugh and it dissipated. "Is Leo here?" he asked, though he doubted it because he couldn't hear him.

As expected, Piper shook her head no. "He's actually coming straight from work. He's changing my oil."

He looked at the wall between him and the driveway as if he might have developed X-ray vision in the last ten seconds. "Is that not your car out there?"

Piper looked mildly offended. "No, the Geo's Annabeth's. It barely manages to toodle around town."

_How is this girl even real?_ "So what do you drive, then?" he asked, suspecting she might answer with more than a brand and a color.

He was right. With no small satisfaction, Piper said, "I drive a 2010 silver Chevy Malibu mega-hybrid. You better believe he gets 150 mpg on the highway."

"I didn't think Malibu hybrids usually did that well."

Her smile widened. "They don't. Leo made some modifications."

"Are we discussing my awesomeness?" Leo asked as he let himself in, leaving the door open as he wiped his hands on his shirt, which made his hands the only clean part of him. His shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes were spackled with grime; it didn't look like he'd even tried to clean up after work. Maybe because he didn't have anyone to impress?

"Are we ready to go, or do you guys need to stand around and compliment each other some more?" Leo prompted, having gotten no response to his first question.

"We're ready, we're ready," Piper said, Leo swept his arms through the open door, and the three of them filed out into the evening air, Piper calling out a goodbye to Annabeth.

Jason's Subaru was idling in the driveway, the headlights casting a yellow glow on Annabeth's Geo. Leo hopped in the backseat and reached up to play with the radio until the speakers blasted "Never Gonna Give You Up" with the bass turned all the way up. Piper laughed, rolling her eyes, and Jason hoped he wasn't blushing as he opened the passenger door for her.

* * *

It took half an hour to get to the restaurant Jason had picked out. Half an hour full of _are we there yets_ and _seriously Jason just tell me where we're goings_. But then they pulled up into a small-town parking lot and walked into Sunrise Café, an organic/vegetarian place tucked into this little corner of nowhere. The lighting was low, mostly white Christmas lights strung all around the walls. Leo rambled about the electricity needs, but Jason just thought the glow suited Piper really well.

"This place is amazing," Piper said through a mouthful of tofu spaghetti. "How did you even find it?"

Jason gestured vaguely with his fork. "My half-sister Thalia introduced me. When she's around, we come here a lot, mostly so we don't have to eat with our stepmom." Guilt twisted in his stomach for admitting it, but that didn't make it any less true.

Leo actually chewed and swallowed his bite of burrito. "I didn't know your dad remarried."

Jason shifted in his seat. "Um, yeah."

"You have any stepsiblings?"

"Nope." _Got a lot of unacknowledged halves though, _he finished silently, trying to pretend that made him honest. "What about you guys, got brothers and sisters?"

Piper gave him a squinty look that made him wonder if they'd already discussed this. "Nah, 's just me."

"Samesies," Leo chirped in a falsetto, scrunching up his shoulders and fluttering his eyelashes like a junior-high girl.

He moved on to the next logical topic: "What about your parents? Talk to them any?"

Wrong move.

Piper and Leo froze, their silverware halfway to their mouths as their expressions shut down. A nerve ticked in Leo's jaw, and Piper made an angry noise as she opened and shut her mouth.

"That's a no?" Jason stammered, feeling his confidence splinter and crumble. He scrambled for something new, a distraction. "Sorry. I didn't—um." He racked his brain and found nothing. Not a single topic. And his two companions were dead silent.

By the grace of God, Piper took pity on him. "Look. It's . . ." She looked down at her spaghetti and speared her fork into it, her brow creasing. "It's just not . . . That's not really a thing that we talk about. Sorry."

He was curious what stories they had with their parents to cause such a strong reaction, but he was well aware he'd overstepped a boundary there, so he could wait to ask about it. Instead he went back to safe territory. "You guys going to come to the football game tomorrow?"

The two of them glanced at each other, shrugged, and looked back to him.

"We don't usually," Leo said.

"But we can," Piper offered. "Do you, um, do you want us to?"

"Yeah, I'd love for you to come," Jason said, his eyes never leaving Piper's. He didn't clarify whether his _you_ was singular or plural. "Will your car be drivable by then?"

Without saying a word she glanced at Leo, whose jaw dropped like he'd been slapped. "Of course he'll be drivable by then!" he said, slapping one hand over his heart. "Katoptris is just taking a nap while his oil settles. Beckendorf is watching him while I'm out."

"Katoptris?" Jason asked.

Piper talked right over him. "It _will_ be Beckendorf, right?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest suspiciously. "Not the intern like last time?"

"Yes, I told him specifically not to delegate it to the intern," Leo sighed.

"Guys," Jason said. "Katoptris?"

"Oh, he's her Malibu," Leo said. "_I_ wanted to name him something cool, like Body Smasher, but she said no."

"Actually, I said _hell_ no," she corrected him. "Like 'Festus' is cool."

"'Festus' is so cool!" Leo protested. When Jason's nose crinkled in confusion, the Latino guy explained, "Festus is _my_ ride. Basically the most kickass car this side of the millennium. Gold Camaro with black accents, _50_ mpg, _7_-speed manual overdrive, real badass. Like dragon-level badass."

Those specs sounded almost as insane as Piper's miles-per-gallon. But Jason had taken Latin in high school. "So you named it 'Happy'?"

Piper kicked Leo's chair triumphantly. "Ha! I _told_ you that's what it means."

Leo pushed her away. His light expression seemed fixed in place, colder around the eyes. "Screw off, it's not . . . _Dios mio_. It's just not."

"Where did you guys pick up your cars?" Jason asked reverently. Reyna had bought her Mustang herself, and his Civic was barely any better than Annabeth's Geo.

In perfect unison, Piper and Leo snorted, suppressing grins, and sort of curled toward each other like they were sharing a secret.

"Uh . . . mine was a gift," Leo smirked.

"Mine too," she agreed hastily, tugging on one of her braids.

Jason eyed them both. He wasn't as good at detecting lies as Reyna's dogs were, but they were obviously not telling him the truth, or at least not the whole truth. "Come on."

Piper scooped a big forkful of spaghetti into her mouth and shrugged. Leo studied the ceiling.

"Right," Jason sighed. Maybe they weren't close enough for the Parents and Cars talks yet. He sipped from his glass of water and listened as Leo began to ponder the restaurant's security system.

* * *

"That stuff was super good. Good choice, bro," Leo commended Jason as the trio shouldered through the restaurant doors out into the dark. "I did like that stuff Reyna made yesterday, though. What was that, stir fry? That was the best."

"You could learn to make stir fry," Piper teased him. "If you ever cooked."

"I can cook!" he protested. "I _can_. Just because I _don't_—"

"Is a pretty good proof that you can't put your money where your mouth is," Jason suggested with a grin.

Leo gasped and shoved him on the shoulder. It barely made an impact, but Jason pretended to reel from it. "Ruuude," the shorter boy crowed as he climbed into the backseat of the Civic.

"Speaking of rude," Piper said from the passenger's side, "can we talk about that research paper from today?"

Jason dropped into the driver's seat and started the car. He said nothing, hoping the topic would pass over, but the other two latched onto it.

"Can you believe Mr. D?" Leo huffed. "All of a sudden it goes from Test I Can BS With 20 Minutes Of Studying to Research Paper I _Have_ To BS After Hours Of Researching And Writing. That's not cool, bro."

"Fifteen pages," she grimaced, in the same tone one might say _genital herpes_. "I swear none of our profs think we take any other classes."

Jason gave a small noncommittal smile. His dad complained enough about the faculty that he himself had to defend them half the time. By the grace of God, Reyna rarely complained about her classes, or discussed them at all, really. "I'm sure there's a good reason for the change."

Leo gave him a strange look. "I dunno, man."

"I mean, essays are harder to grade than multiple-choice tests, right?" Piper asked. "So it's not like he made it easier for himself here."

"Maybe the test would have been really hard, and he's helping us out?" Jason offered.

"Right," Leo snorted.

Piper rubbed her arms fiercely. "It looks really hard, Jason. And I'm saying that as an okay writer."

"What if we worked together on it?" Jason suggested suddenly, hoping to improve the mood. "We could study together, like in the library or something, and bounce ideas off each other and stuff. We can't help each other _write_ the papers, necessarily, but it might make it easier to get there."

Leo and Piper looked at each other quietly again, and for a moment he was afraid studying together was as taboo as parents and cars. But then Piper nodded slowly. "That might be good. Would that be okay?"

"Oh, yeah." It'd be more than okay, if it meant Jason got to spend more time with her. "You want to, then?"

"Sounds good," she said, and he glanced from the road for a second so he could look at her smile.

"Me too," Leo piped up from the back, ruining any possible mood. "Writing's not really my thing."

"It's a plan, then," the blond said.

A half hour drive later, Jason dropped Leo and Piper off at Leo's work, watched to make sure they got inside the garage, and then drove back to the apartment. He wasn't sure when he opened the door whether or not Reyna would still be awake, but he came in the hallway and saw her curled up in her armchair, reading by the light of one lamp, the dogs sitting watch at her feet.

"Hey," he said softly, not wanting to startle her.

She looked up and closed her book. "How did it go?"

"It was great." The conversation and the company equally so, even with a few social slip-up.

She gave a thin smile, barely there. She was probably really tired.

"You shouldn't have waited up for me," he said; "it's late."

She shrugged, held up her book. "Wanted to get some reading done," she said. He didn't believe her, but he didn't push it.

"Listen," he started, "while I've got you here—we were talking tonight about that research paper, the huge one for World Myth. The three of us, we think, we're going to work together, study together, that sort of thing. Just to make it more bearable, bounce ideas off each other. You want to join us?"

She looked at the dogs. "The three of you . . . you, Piper, and Leo?"

"Yeah."

"No, thanks," she said, her tone crisp. "I appreciate the offer, but I work pretty well alone. I think I can figure it out."

He shrugged, which was a whole lot easier than trying to get any more information out of her. He knew from personal experience that when Reyna didn't want to talk about something, she shut down until she was ready to address it. Maybe she just needed more time to get over the double date from hell. "Okay. Your choice. If you change your mind, you're always welcome."

She laughed once, under her breath, and whispered something that sounded like a sarcastic _right_.


	6. Sweat

_A/N: All those snippets and my new tablet have consumed me. Sorry that this update is neither timely nor particularly good._

* * *

The apartment door creaked open as Reyna leaned onto it, Aurum and Argentum panting at her feet. She could feel the sweat sticking to her back and diaphragm; she would probably need to rinse her T-shirt and shorts out now just to keep them from stinking up her entire laundry basket. Kicking off her running shoes, she clicked her tongue and, when the obedient greyhounds sat, rubbed them down quickly with a wet towel before letting them trot off to lie down.

"Jason?" she called, and he popped his head out of his room, headphones dangling from his ears.

"You have a good run?" he asked, pitching his voice a little too loud. She gestured to her ears, and he pulled the earbuds out with an abashed grin.

"Yeah, it was fine," she sighed, crossing her arms as she leaned against the wall. "Went seven miles today. _Ay_."

He flashed her a thumbs-up. "Good job. Should I use the bathroom now, while I can?"

She smiled faintly and nodded, her eyes closing. He laughed and, when he came back out, tossed her a purple towel from the linen closet. She caught it with one hand and then let herself into the bathroom, turning on the shower to let the water heat up as she undressed.

After a good ten minutes of hot water pounding on her achy muscles, she wrung her hair out and dried off, wrapping the towel around herself so she could skip into her bedroom, right across from the bathroom. Pulling on underwear, loose jeans, and a tank top, she began the long task of suppressing the tangled mane of her wet hair.

A soft knock came from the other side of her door.

"You can come in," she said, and the door opened tentatively. Jason peeked around to make sure he wasn't going to knock into her and then flopped down on her bed, stretching with the liquidity of a cat. "How can I help you?" she asked as she tugged her brush through the lowest layer of dark waves.

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "You coming to the game?"

She cocked her head and smiled. "No, I've suddenly decided to break my eleven-year streak of attending all your home sports events," she teased him. "No hurt feelings, right?"

"I might cry myself to sleep," he said, laughing.

As she swept her hair over her other shoulder and began to brush through it all again, she reached out and nudged him with her foot. "Was there a reason you were so anxious to find out?"

He reached up to rub the back of his neck. She looked away. "Look, it's—it's probably not going to be anything," he started, "but I invited Piper and Leo to the game, and I didn't know if you might sit with them?"

She pursed her lips and continued to brush.

"Of course you don't have to if you don't want to," he continued in a rush. "But I thought it might be nice, since they don't seem to have a ton of other people they hang out with. And—"

And then he fell silent, which told Reyna something bigger was at play.

"And what?" she sighed.

"And," Jason said hesitantly, "I'm thinking I'm going to ask Piper out after the game. Like on a real date. With dating words."

Her breath caught in her throat. She swallowed hard, glancing at him to see his expression. He looked equal parts hopeful and anxious, his mouth a thin line as he looked at her, waited for her approval.

"'Dating words,'" she said quietly. "Like 'girlfriend'?"

"Yeah."

Oh god. Feeling her calves start to tremble, she stood up and walked up to the mirror on her door, combing her hair back from her face and beginning the long, single French braid. "So you want, what, advice? My blessing?"

When she twisted her whole torso to look at him, he was looking back at her, his lips still pressed together. "What do you think?" he asked.

_I think I've liked you since junior high, and I've waited for you to make a move, but this is a really painful way for you to tell me it's not going to happen. _She yanked the three strands tight and twisted a small elastic band around the end of the braid. Smoothing her fingers over it to distract herself, she said, "I think she likes you. Go for it."

He let out a big breath and smiled at her. She scrunched up her eyes but couldn't quite manage a full smile in return.

Her hair was still wet when she pulled on her sneakers and walked over to the university football field an hour later. She flashed her student ID to the guy selling tickets, and he let her pass on to the bleachers. This was a big game, with a big crowd to match. The place was packed. Trying to ignore the anxiety rising in her throat, she glanced over the masses, looking for a familiar face. Annabeth or Percy, maybe. Instead her gaze landed on Piper.

The choppy-haired girl was sitting toward the middle, by herself, as far as Reyna could see. _All right, time to be an adult,_ she told herself. She inched through the crowded bleachers, excusing herself as she squeezed past people. This felt like it ought to be an Olympic sport—not quite pole-vaulting or hurdles, but in that same vein. She could feel herself going more rigid with every person she touched, her arms and legs tensing, ready to fight. Racing with adrenaline, her pulse pounded in her temples, and her nails dug into her palms. _Walk, just walk_, she coached herself. _You're okay. It's fine._ Somehow that didn't help at all. The nauseating memories still crept into the back of her head.

It was actually a relief when Piper looked over and waved at her. Reyna picked her way over and set her jacket down on the bleachers next to her. "Hello," she said politely.

"Hey." Piper smiled, and it only looked a little forced. "You almost missed kickoff." She jerked one thumb toward the football field, where both teams were gathering on the spray-painted grass.

Reyna jumped in surprise when she heard Leo's loud laugh from right beside her—when had he arrived?—and when she turned he tried to squeeze past her. They were closer than she liked and though he gave a friendly smile, she stumbled and it was overshadowed by his hand that landed on her waist.

_Touch. Close. Too close._

The anxiety that had been building in her exploded. She raked her own hand down her sides, shoving him away and stumbling into the row behind her.

"Don't touch me," she commanded, but her voice cracked. "Don't . . ."

He had frozen, confusion etched on his face. "I didn't mean to—"

"Just don't," she repeated, and as the burst of anxiety drained away, she realized that the people in the bleachers had gone silent around them. She lifted her chin and looked them all hard in the eyes until they averted their eyes and resumed their conversations.

Piper cleared her throat. "Um, Leo, come sit down."

Carefully avoiding physical contact with Reyna, he inched past both girls and slumped into the seat on Piper's other side as a piercing whistle marked the beginning of the game.

* * *

As soon as the game was over, Jason grabbed his stuff from the locker room and trotted out to the fence that separated the field from the bleachers. Three figures, silhouetted by the bright lights, leaned against it. He aimed for them.

The tallest turned first—Reyna—and waved to him. Piper and Leo, shorter and shortest, immediately followed her example. He thought he saw Piper slip Leo something, but it must have been a trick of the light glaring in his face.

"Good game, as usual," Reyna called as he approached.

Leo mimed throwing a football and then doing a victory dance, complete with butt-wiggling. "Another single-handed touchdown by Graaaaace!" he howled in his best announcer voice, and then he dissolved into laughter.

"That's not how football works." Piper rolled her eyes before turning toward Jason, wrinkling her nose, and telling him, "You stink."

Reyna cracked a smile.

Jason grinned, hopped up on the bench so he was at eye level with them, and spread his arms wide. "Have I ever told you guys how much I like you?" he teased, leaning in like he wanted to give them a hug, well aware that his clothes were soaked in sweat and he smelled like post-game locker room.

The three leaned away just as quickly. "Blech!" Piper made a face, but she was also the first to bounce back.

He grinned at her, knocking his chest against the fence so that the metal rattled. "Do you have to run home, or do you have a little bit?"

Her expression twitched slightly, happy but suspicious. "I have a little bit. Let's not assume I'm doing my homework or anything crazy like that."

"Me either!" Leo said brightly. "Why, are we going out again? 'Cause I'm starving."

Jason gave him an apologetic smile. "I was actually . . . uh, gonna talk to just Piper on this one. Sorry, man."

Leo pretended to reel. "Oh, geez, dude. It hurts."

Jason didn't miss the pointed expression Piper shot Leo, the one that actually made him back away. Then he looked up and Reyna had disappeared—a whip of dark braid going around the corner. As Leo tromped up to the top of the bleachers and began to crawl around looking for who knew what, this left Jason effectively alone with Piper.

Which he had wanted, but now he was considering backing out.

"So," she prompted, going a little red, "what do you need?"

He pictured himself pulling out a tux and a red rose and saying _you_, and he felt the blood rush to his face. "Uh . . . I just . . ."

"Here, hang on." Piper gripped the top of the fence and lifted herself up and over, raising her heels so that she didn't catch on it. A slight breeze ruffled his uniform as she landed, both feet on the grass in front of him. "There. Now I'm on your level." Relatively speaking. There was almost half a foot's difference between their heights, and she had to tilt her head up to look him in the eye. Looking down at her, he was struck by how easy it would be to kiss her. Just close the space. One step forward.

He felt his face heat up even more. What had he been going to say?

She raised her eyebrows and bounced on the balls of her feet, clearly wondering the same thing.

"So, have you ever played football?" he asked, wincing as soon as the words came out of his mouth.

"Mm, nooo," Piper said, her eyes and mouth scrunching up in confusion.

He hadn't meant to bring this up, but at least football he could talk about. "It's, um, it's pretty fun. There's, you know, a team and stuff. We practice every day."

"Yyyyep."

Better just go with it. "We spend a lot of time together on the team," he continued. "We get to be pretty close."

Leo shouted something about a screwdriver. Jason glanced up to make sure the mechanic hadn't hurt himself before he looked back to Piper, who was still waiting for him to make his point. "That's cool," she prompted him, but her tone said _where are you going with this?_

He coughed. "Sometimes we have team dinners and stuff. And sometimes dinner with one person on the team turns into the whole team coming to dinner, even if we didn't mean for it to."

Piper blinked twice and rose up on her toes. He thought he saw her flush a little.

"I'm friends with everybody," he said emphatically. "But there's one person I'd like to be more . . . you know?" He rolled his shoulders and hunched forward, widening his eyes. _Come on, help me out_, he willed her.

Then the light came on in her eyes. "Ohhh," she said, sticking her hands in her pockets. "You're gay."

"No!" Jason exclaimed, his face heating up. "I just—_You_. And me."

Her face went from slightly pink to baseball-stitches red. "Oh," she choked out.

"Yeah."

They both stared at their shoes. Jason wished he smelled like something other than locker room.

"So," she said.

"Yeah."

"Us?"

"That'd be cool," he offered.

"I think so too." In an effort to regain her composure, she looked up and threw him a part-silly, part-sultry look. "But tread carefully, Grace. I'm a dangerous girl."

He laughed. "That I can believe," he teased her. "You climb fences like nobody's business."

The two of them looked at each other for a moment, smiling like goons, and the awkwardness dissolved. "Now, you big dope," Piper prompted, shifting towards him, "are you going to kiss me, or am I going to have to go home smelling like B.O. for no good reason?"

"Given the choices," Jason began with a lopsided grin, and then he carefully tucked his hands on either side of her face and leaned down to kiss her full on the mouth, something he'd hardly dared to hope for since the first day he'd seen her in class. And maybe they were from different paths of life, and maybe she had issues with parents and getting cars, but he didn't really care. It didn't make it wrong, it just made it interesting.

Because the two of them together? That was _right_.

* * *

Research paper time. Reyna set up the kitchen table with her laptop and textbooks and class notes, pretending that the silence didn't bother her. And usually it wouldn't, it was just today. Jason had come home, showered, and then run right back out the door for a World Myth study session at the library with his new girlfriend and her repair boy. So she had decided to get started on the paper herself, in case he came back with questions, but she wasn't exactly thrilled to work on it.

_Stop complaining,_ she told herself. _The sooner you get this done, the sooner you can forget about it._ So, trying to ignore the deafening silence, she glanced over the assignment sheet for the fifteenth time.

She had sent in her topic the afternoon this paper was assigned, so she had a head start there. Percy would have hated her thesis: the Roman takeover of Greece actually helped the Grecian culture because . . . and that was as far as she had gotten.

The paper specs felt impossible. How could she write such a long paper on top of all her other classes and student government responsibilities? Not that bailing out of it was an option; Reyna would rather change her major to math education than admit defeat. She would just have to put in a certain amount of time every day, and eventually it would get itself done.

_Okay_, she encouraged herself, looking at the all-but-blank Word document. _Reasons for Rome improving Greece. Go._

But her mind had frozen. This was stupid; she debated this with Percy all the time. But Percy didn't require 15 pages of 1.5 spacing. What kind of outline would she need for this to meet the basic guidelines? Multiple reasons, maybe a few opposing opinions to take down. Block quotations might help. At least she would have 10 sources to quote from.

"_Ugh_," she said out loud, hanging her head over the back of her chair. She dropped her hand onto the keyboard, making her thesis officially "The Roman takeover of Greece actually helped the Grecian culture because ydutcvkhb." As much as Mr. D would appreciate that intellectual assertion, she held down the backspace key until she was back to square one.

Time for a bullet list brainstorming session? She sighed but, given that she was completely unmotivated for this paper right now, decided to give it a shot. _Architecture_, she typed, looking at the ceiling as if inspiration might float down. _Religion. Fighting._ (She knew there was a word for what she meant, but she didn't want to linger too long looking for it.) _Stuff._

This was going nowhere fast, and there was no way architecture, religion, fighting, and "stuff" would fill a research paper.

Rotating her jaw and pursing her lips, she looked reluctantly toward the apartment door.

* * *

Piper's fingers curled over Jason's shoulder as she collapsed into him, laughing so hard she thought she might fall over. He smelled good—a hint of aftershave, or cologne maybe, not thick in the air like a junior-high boys' locker room. Just enough. She could feel him shaking in silent laughter, and she wanted to hang onto him forever.

"What time is it even?" she asked when they'd caught their breath.

Jason glanced at his watch. "Uh, just after eight."

Leo swore brightly. "A whole three hours! Nice. Go, team."

But as the laughter subsided, Piper looked at the table—cluttered with their hibernating laptops and untouched stacks of books—and began to realize that they weren't exactly being what those in higher academia would call "productive." "Hey, guys, not to be a buzzkill, but we haven't _done_ anything in those three hours," she said.

Jason and Leo scrunched up their mouths in unison. "Guess so," sighed Leo. "But I'd bet my next paycheck that not doing anything is way more fun than doing something."

"Maybe, but I don't want to have to graduate late just because I didn't pass a gen ed." Jason leaned forward and squiggled his finger over the mouse touchpad on his MacBook, making the screen light back up to the Google homepage. "I really don't care that much about World Myth."

Piper pointed her pencil at him. "Very true."

"This probably isn't the time to bring up my academic probation," Leo grinned.

Piper tore a piece of paper out of her notebook, wadded it up into a ball, and chucked it at his forehead. He yelped when it hit its mark.

"Guys," Jason reprimanded them. "We really have to get this done. Come on. What are your topics?"

Piper and Leo exchanged guilty looks. "Uh . . ."

"You first," she suggested.

The VP groaned. "You know Reyna's had her topic since the afternoon Mr. D assigned this, right?"

Piper felt her cheeks flush, for once not in a good way. Why did he feel the need to compare them? Her eyes on her hands, she was searching for a response when Leo switched gears: "How is Reyna? Has she, um, forgotten about the kitchen thing yet?"

"Ah, that'd be a no," Jason admitted.

Leo huffed out a breath and looked away. "Geez. It wasn't even my fault. Is that why she wouldn't come tonight? Isn't there anything I can do to—?"

"It's not that," Jason said patiently, "she just prefers to work alone. She's smart and efficient, and I think she knew that we—"

Someone rapped lightly on the door to the private study room. Prepared to sweet-talk the librarian again, Piper hopped up and cracked the door open to see . . . Reyna? The other girl stood regally straight, her laptop under her arm, her braid hanging over her shoulder.

"Hi?" said Piper. She wondered if she had heard them talking about her and, more important, why she was there in the first place. Playing chaperone, maybe?

"Hi," repeated Reyna in a whisper. Piper didn't know her very well, but she could have sworn Reyna's face was darkening a little. "Can I come in?"

"Uh . . . sure." Trying to keep a straight face, Piper stepped aside so Reyna could sweep in (there was really no other way to describe her authoritative walk) and then closed the door behind her. The president looked over their arrangement: Leo, Piper, and Jason sat around the semicircular table, with one empty chair on Jason's left and a big, blank computer monitor installed on the flat edge of the table. To Piper the next move seemed to happen in slow motion, and she couldn't quite name every emotion that coursed through her as Reyna lifted her chin and said, in a stiff tone that was intended as a statement but came out an uncertain question—

"Maybe, this once, I could join you?"

Jason smiled and pulled out the extra chair for her.


End file.
